Satellite-delivered – Page 2 – Digital-Lifestyles

BT Media And Broadcast Division Set For Part Sale

We understand from good sources that BT is set to announce the name of the buyer for a major slice of its Media and Broadcast operations.

As we revealed in January, BT’s Media and Broadcast (BT M & B) is looking to jettison its unprofitable OU operations. It has let interested parties know that a cash buyer would be welcome for its fleet of Transportable Satellite link vehicles.

We now hear that the sale is going to cover more than just the Occasional Use business.

BT, which since Post Office days has been working with the broadcasting industry, has been persuaded to include its profitable multiplexing business in the sale. This uplinks (ground to satellite) many of the Sky digital TV services and, we understand, it’s possible that part of the ITV network, that it is also responsible for, would also be included.

BT set to announce part sale of its Media and Broadcast division In the frame for the buyout, which is likely to involve the transfer of over 100 employees, is the Australian-backed Arqiva and a major UK bank.

The sale will ensure that existing contracts are honoured. Shedding it is symptomatic of the burden a heavily-unionised BT carries in making units perform profitably and it strikes at M & B’s ambitions to be a powerhouse in the evolving IPTV world.

Insiders have doubts that media and broadcast will continue an operating unit for more than 12 months.

As soon as we have the details on the decision it’ll be here on Digital Lifestyles.

BSkyB Moves Execs, To Enter ‘Adjacent Areas Of Business’

BSkyB Moves Execs, To Enter Adjacent Areas Of Business Sky has announced three of its top Exec will be altering roles, we suspect, as they prepare to become more than just a satellite TV company.

Using its best management speak, the UK Satellite-overlord is “aligning its organisational structure to support sustained growth towards its target of 10 million direct-to-home customers in 2010.”

The favoured three will be stepping it up a gear, and far beyond having the key for the executive toilet, we suspect they’ll be getting a whole suite of bathroom facilities.

Dawn Airey, who has been Managing Director of Sky Networks since 2003, becomes Managing Director, Channels and Services with overall responsibility for Sky’s multi-platform content strategy. The existing Sky Networks structure will be joined in the Channels and Services group by an enlarged interactive team that brings together all of Sky’s new media content on interactive TV, online and mobile platforms. She’ll assume additional responsibility for Sky’s joint ventures, wholesale distribution arrangements with cable companies and commercial relationships with third-party channels on the satellite platform.
Mike Darcey, who joined Sky in 1998 and is currently Group Strategy Director, becomes Group Commercial and Strategy Director with extended responsibility for a new group that combines Sky’s Strategy, Future Technology, R&D and Business Development teams. In addition, he’ll take on a further responsibility to manage and develop Sky’s major commercial relationships in support of the company’s strategic goals
Jon Florsheim, who joined Sky in 1994, becomes Managing Director, Customer Group in addition to his existing title of Chief Marketing Officer. The Customer Group brings together all of Sky’s expertise in sales, marketing and customer operations to create a seamless brand, product and service experience for customers. This team will lead the continued development and implementation of Sky’s multi-product strategy, including the launch of the company’s broadband offering in the second half of calendar 2006.

BSkyB Moves Execs, To Enter Adjacent Areas Of Business We think Mike Darcey sounds like he’s going to have the most fun, and certainly the most toys to play with.

James Murdoch, Sky’s Chief Executive, touches on where BSkyB is planning on going, as they “exploit content on multiple platforms and expand into adjacent areas of business.”

With the strength of BSkyB’s relationships with their customers, fear will be struck into the heart of many execs in many industries by the words “adjacent areas of business.”

UK Satellite-Delivered Broadband Switched Off

Rural Surfers Suffer Satellite Broadband Switch Off Several thousand rural surfers across Europe suddenly found themselves sans le Internet after European-based satellite broadband provider Aramiska unexpectedly slammed shut its operations with just five hours’ notice.

The sudden announcement left thousands of customers – including small businesses and numerous community broadband operations – without any access.

Using the Eutelsat Atlantic Bird satellite, Aramiska was able to offer services across five countries (the UK, France, the Netherlands, Ireland and Spain), with the majority being in the UK.

A message posted on the Website of the UK-based Internet company Ehotspot, which used Aramiska to provide satellite links, confirmed that the Netherlands-based firm had gone into liquidation.

Jon Sprank, eHotspot’s MD, explained: “eHotspot would firstly like to apologise to our customers for lack of service. This came as a bolt from the blue with no notice – we have suspended all billing to our customers. This has only truly been dropped on us and we are currently spending our time sourcing an alternative backhaul supplier

The disappearance of the Aramiska service is expected to have a serious knock-on effect for community broadband providers who provide “second mile” backhaul connectivity.

Rural Surfers Suffer Satellite Broadband Switch Off The Community Broadband Network (CBN) is organising efforts to help Aramiska customers find an alternative satellite broadband supplier, with their director, Adrian Wooster, commenting, “The Aramiska issue totally caught our members unaware, and is causing many problems for rural businesses beyond simple connectivity; the Aramiska service was also hosting many Websites and has been offering file storage capabilities for businesses.”

Although there’s no shortage of alternative satellite broadband providers in the market, smaller, shoestring operations may find it difficult to get their users back online quickly.

The closure reflects the fragility of some companies in the satellite-based broadband service market, which is coming under increase pressure in some areas from the increased availability of conventional wired broadband.

Despite this, large areas of Europe still remain on the wrong side of the digital divide, and reliable wireless and satellite services are needed across the European Union to ensure that all its citizens can keep up with technological change.

Community Broadband Network
Aramiska users scrabble to find supplier after Web blackout

BT Media and Broadcast Sale Sought: Exclusive

BT Looks To Sell OU Operations Digital-Lifestyles has been informed, and can exclusively reveal, that BT is looking to shed its OU operations from its Media and Broadcast (BT M&B) division.

For those of you not in the know (like the vast majority of those not directly involved in the day-to-day of the business), OU is Occasional Use – the temporary services that provide worldwide video for events like Live 8.

BT has a long history of servicing the broadcast industry with the provision of telecom lines and links dating back to pre-Privatisation Post Office days. They provide the infrastructure behind ITV’s regional switching network and its customers include such TV giants as CNN and QVC.

Despite BT as a whole being determined to move into new revenue opportunities like TV, there’s new breed of technology solutions for linking signals which are outside BT’s control. This bothersome issue is further squeezing their previously healthy profits, and the current cost base for BT’s OU services makes it difficult to justify continued operations, indeed we’ve been told that the OU is currently unprofitable. It’s hoped that a buyer will be able to make the operations pay, by reducing costs and realising synergies.

In the last decade, the former state monopoly phone companies (and many argue this hasn’t changed a great deal) have divested themselves of the majority of their interests in global satellite operators, as we saw when the global teleco industry packaged and sold Intelsat. There’s no reason to not see a continuation of that trend.

BT Looks To Sell OU Operations Further deals for incumbent European telecoms operators are on the cards as they retreat into their core businesses. See France Telecom, who recently off-loaded one of its Paris Earth Stations to the satellite operator Eutelsat.

Private discussion are ongoing with a number of suitors and a decision on a buyer is expected in February. Those linked with the purchase include satellite operators Intelsat and SES.

It’s unlikely to be simple to disengage the Occasional Use element from the Media and Broadcast division and potential suitors may try and cherry pick the more profitable elements in a deal.

Hubble Image ‘Largest Ever’

Hubble Image Largest Ever A huge photograph of the Orion Nebula taken by the Hubble Space Telescope has been released on the Internet. It is thought to be one of the largest images every produced.

How big’s that then? 18,000 x 18,000 pixels!

Download are available in a number of sizes and resolutions. The smallest is a 6,000 x 6,000 px JPEG weighty in at a mere 2.6Mb, which is also available as a TIFF, taking it to 49.12Mb.

The 18k x 18k monsters is 23.67Mb as a JPEG and a ISP-crashing 385.09Mb TIFF. We’ve yet to get the whole image down, but we’ve been told that the image is 927Mb when decompressed – not too bad when you think you’re getting 256 million pixels.

The guidance on the download page, wisely suggest download the file rather than trying to view it in your Browser.

For those who don’t fancy downloading that, or for those on dial-up, NASA also provide a Flash-fronted version you can look at using your browser.

Hubble Image Largest Ever Around two years ago the previous version of this image was also distributed online, but that was a ‘mere’ 6,200 x 6,200, at that time, also claimed at the ‘largest image ever’.

Many have commented that trying to download the image has been a direct route to frustration, as space fans pile into grabbing it.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency, not just NASA as many publication are reporting. Looks like NASA’s may be getting stuck with the bandwidth bill though.

Flash version
Image download page

Eutelsat IPO At 14:30 In ParisToday

Today will see the share IPO of Eutelsat, the third largest satellite operator.

Shares are due to start trading in Paris at 14:30 at €12, following its cancelled flotation last month. A total of €860m should be raised.

Some are wondering if, in the year that marks the 60th Anniversary of Arthur C Clarke’s famous Wireless World treatise on ‘Extra Terrestrial Relays’, a shadow may have fallen on Satellite’s hegemony of trans-global communications.

Only yesterday, the great and the good of the satellite business gave their views on the future of the industry at the Arthur C. Clarke event at the IEE in London.There was much talk of uncertainty in the industry, with many small Niche audience’s becoming the expected targets of the future.

Eutelsat is positioned behind Intelsat and SES, the giants of global satellite business. It has 23 satellites of its own, transmiting around 1,700 television channels. It has its main markets in the super-served regions of Europe and the Middle East.

Eutelsat

Satellite Business Joins The Niche Club

The Legacy of Arthur C. Clarke, Review: IEE Lecture

Satellite Business Joins The Niche Club Yesterday evening saw a celebration of The Legacy of Arthur C Clarke at the IEE in London.

Rightly so. His fame not only stretched across the globe, it spanned fathering the communication satellite, to great fiction. Who can forget the seminal Sci-Fi classic 2001- A Space Odyssey?

During the addresses given by the assembled industry heavyweights, pontification was rife as they pronounced on the effect of satellite technology advances and where the industry stood in the communication world today.

To boil it down – satellites would be an important part of the communications mix, but it was unlikely to be as dominant as it was once thought.

Getting stuck right in was Olof Lumberg, formerly Chairman of Inmarsat, remarking on how the cabling of the planet was making some uses of Satellite technology passé.

Seeing quite how far Skype is disrupting businesses was interesting as key figures from the satellite industry noted that customer expectations brought about by Skype and similar VoIP technology had meant that the business model that ‘costs in’ the launching of huge satellites was becoming increasingly redundant.

Satellite Business Joins The Niche Club Professor Barry Evans of the University of Surrey considered the 1980’s and 90’s were probably the golden age for communication satellites and predicted their future as an infill technology. Working alongside terrestrial delivery systems, with the possibility of satellite providing TV connectivity to mobile devices outside the fibred home.

Marcus Bicknell, Commercial Director of SES Global the satellite giant spoke about the importance of niche markets and revealed a new low cost satellite mobile phone designed to help parents locate their children.

Some were more optimistic. Sir Martin Sweeting, who heads Surrey Space Technology, a world leader in small satellite development, saw a future with far less expensive launches. This could lead to the creation of ’clouds of small deployable satellites,’ configurable to provide focused communication at times of disasters.

Happily it wasn’t all business predictions. Arthur C Clarke’s brother Frederick spoke charmingly about his brothers’ early enthusiasm in looking at the skies.

The crowning glory of the night was a recorded message from Arthur C Clarke himself, from his home in Sri Lanka. Projected onto a large screen at the grand, historic setting of Savoy Place, home of the IEE, Clarke’s lucid speech belied his eighty-eighth birthday, only a few day away.

Reassuring to hear that his commitment to technology remains.

IEE – Institution of Electrical Engineers

Satellite Operators Consolidation To Continue

Satellite Operators Consolidation To Continue It’s not cheap to launch a satellite and, as commercial satellite operators have become prey to acquisition over the last 2 years, this has been followed by the operators consolidating. The economics of satellite distribution have fundamentally changed in the USA and Western Europe. Expect competition to be fierce in what was until recently a comfortable cartel carved out the International Telecoms Union (ITU) with constituent members many years ago.

Long term, there may be question marks over the future of satellite. While it’s currently the main method of transmitting digital pay-TV platforms to much of Europe, the threats increase. The combination of the continued increases in the efficiencies of encoding technology and additional service distribution reduce the need to rely on satellite.

Satellite does still have an important role to play as an intermediate solution, that is, providing connectivity and services ahead of the arrival of more sophisticated solutions. It will also continue as a ‘in fill’ for those places where the population is dispersed and delivery of data by other means would be uneconomic.

Increasingly telecommunications traffic is being carried by fibre – an example being sports games, that used to be delivered to the broadcasters by satellite, now routinely use fibre that is available at most major venues. This has led to many Telco’s divesting their interest in the satellite companies.

Satellite Operators Consolidation To Continue Telecommunications companies like France Telecom are increasingly selling off underused teleport facilities – they’re those places with loads of big satellite dishes pointing towards the heavens. These are being bought by satellite operators so they can offer an integrated end-to-end solution to their customers.

So expect the merged Intelsat/PanAmSat who bought PanAmSat for $3.2 billion at end of August to take satellite uplink business from Globecast (owned by France Telecom) and other European Telco’s who have traditionally up-linked their satellite services.

The metamorphosis will continue with an IPO by Eutelsat and a beefed up Inmarsat. Despite a good year for satellite companies, focus will shift to the growing markets of Asia and Africa with tighter control of costs and careful management of capacity in the mature markets.

Anyone say all change?

High Altitude Platform (HAP): Broadband For All?

High Altitude Platform (HAP): Broadband For All? Broadband is taking off everywhere, speeds are increasing and everybody’s happy. Well almost. Broadband isn’t available to all, especially those in more rural areas.

Unfortunately cable companies don’t have the financial resources to lay fibre everywhere (especially in today’s economic climate) and even BT, who are radically changing the old telephone network so that every exchange in the UK is wired up for Internet, still won’t be able to reach rural customers. It isn’t because they don’t want to, but (in BT’s case) the DSL (digital subscriber line) technology just doesn’t work at long distances.

This will leave large percentages of the population without broadband and currently their only option will be expensive satellite systems.

There’s a chance that some kind of fixed wireless access (FWA) solution will become available, but currently the technology is expensive and again requires a massive investment in radio masts and connecting them all together. Unfortunately FWA is likely to be used for backhaul in more urban areas where the population density justifies the upfront investment.

HAPpy HAPpy, Joy Joy
Luckily it looks like there is an answer, and it’s call HAP (High Altitude Platform). There have already been trials of HAP using tethered balloons, and these have been reasonably successful, but there are problems. They are relatively low altitude, so may interfere with other air traffic. However being tethered means they can use the tether cable to connect to the infrastructure on the ground (i.e. say the Internet), but it limits them to being tethered in suitably connected areas.

Utilising a real HAP solution means sending what could be called airships up 20Km or so, these would freely roam the sky. Being so high they wouldn’t interfere with commercial air traffic – of course would still need to get approval from the international aviation authorities, especially for launching them and what happens when something goes wrong or they falls back to earth.

High Altitude Platform (HAP): Broadband For All? Other approaches to HAP involve lightweight aircraft, such as the European-funded Capanina project.

Both balloon and fixed-wing platforms would use radio systems (similar to satellite) to transmit to end-users, who would use a steer able dish that tracks the HAP. Current thoughts are that the HAPs will use both radio and optical transmissions between HAPs (since optical interference is very low at 20Km altitude).

The HAP end-user connection may use existing WiFi-type solutions to actually connect people, so a small village may have a central HAP system which then people connect to using traditional systems.

Where HAP can offer significant benefits, is to moving objects such as trains. They would use a sophisticated electronically steer able aerial to track the HAPs and would allow continuous reception of signals – even between HAPs.

Since the bandwidth between a ground receiver and the HAP would be about 120Mb/s, rural (and moving) users might actually get a better service than traditional broadband users.

Unfortunately it’s going to take a while for this to be a commercial reality, but at least people are thinking about it, trials are commencing now and it’s got European funding.

Capanina

IP Over Satellite Standard Gets ETSI Approval

IP Over Satellite Standard Gets ETSI Approval Satellite broadband services should become a lot easier to implement with the adoption of the first broadband satellite standard on both sides of the Atlantic.

The transatlantic agreement sees both the US-based Telecommunication Industry Association (TIA) and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) adopting the Internet Protocol over Satellite (IPOS) standard.

Satellite data links are an important alternative to wired links in poorly connected rural areas or for business operations that like to regularly shuffle about to new locations.

IPOS-based equipment and software used to build satellite broadband will now be available from a variety of companies who support the standard, including Hughes Network Systems, Microelectronics Technology, Texas Instruments, TriQuint Semiconductor, Wind River Software, Intelsat and Telefonica.

“Now ratified and approved by the two major standards bodies, IPoS opens the door for greater optimisation and economies of scale throughout the satellite industry,” said Pradman Kaul, chief executive officer of Hughes Network Systems.

“IPoS is the only air interface specifically designed for the efficient delivery of broadband satellite services and offers the best means to expand satellite’s addressable markets worldwide.”

“The IPoS standard is extensively field proven, highly scalable and supports low-cost terminals. Now approved by both governing bodies, widespread adoption of the IPoS will further reduce equipment costs and make broadband available and affordable to many more users worldwide,” said Enrique Salvatierra, director of Satellite and Submarine Cables Department, Telefonica de Espana.

IPoS works by specifying a Satellite Independent Service Access Point, which creates an interface between the satellite-dependent functions and the application layers, thereby enabling an open service delivery platform.

To date, the standard has been implemented in over 500,000 sites worldwide.

IP Over Satellite Standard Gets ETSI Approval “Intelsat meets the connectivity requirements of some of the largest telecommunications service providers worldwide,” said Frederick Morris, vice president of Intelsat.

“These companies frequently turn to us for unbiased assessment of satellite broadband technologies available to their end-customers, and having standards like IPoS makes this process easier. We heartily endorse any effort to spread standardisation throughout the satellite broadband service industry.”

IPOS will be competing against the likes of WiMAX in the fixed broadband wireless market. WiMAX trials have already been started by AT&T at companies in the US and Europe is expected to experience the first WiMAX services from providers next year.

Telecommunications Industry Association
European Telecommunications Standards Institute