Over the past year, governments across the world have launched their universal broadband plans to much fanfare. The pronouncements have brought with them hope that a significant amount of state stimulus funding would be set aside for the satellite…
Over the past year, governments across the world have launched their universal broadband plans to much fanfare. The pronouncements have brought with them hope that a significant amount of state stimulus funding would be set aside for the satellite sector, as one of the most logical and cost-effective methods of delivering broadband to underserved mainly rural areas.
However, this hope has not quite been matched by reality, particularly in the United States where the FCC’s National Broadband Plan made virtually no reference to satellite technology as a means of achieving universal coverage. Indeed, of the US$7.2bn set aside for broadband development in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, only US$100m was directed towards the satellite sector.
Not all countries, though, have snubbed an industry so seemingly suited to providing internet services to remote areas. The Australian government continues to throw its weight behind Ka-band satellites as the solution to its universal broadband initiative, the National Broadband Network (NBN).
This month, the government released an implementation plan for NBN which explicitly states the need for two Ka-band satellites. The plan calls for satellite to be the exclusive delivery system of broadband to the 3% of rural Australian households that cannot be reached by terrestrial forms of communication.
In order to achieve this goal, the state-created NBN Company is to contract a satellite company to provide the two satellites and the required earth gateways. NBN Company would then likely acquire the entire Ka-band capacity from the operator and sell it wholesale to enable resellers to offer broadband at an affordable price.
This government backing of broadband via satellite is unsurprisingly attracting Ka-band satellite operators from across the globe, with Hughes Network Systems one of the first to play its hand. The US-based company has created an Australian subsidiary and has publically announced its interest in working with the Australian government on NBN, the first non-Australia company to do so.
Strangely, Australian satellite operator Newsat, which was one of the first companies to seek government funding to back its plans for a broadband satellite, has so far not sought to tap up the NBN for state aid. It has instead announced plans to finance its Jabiru satellite project by securing export credit-backed financing. NewSat said that it can finalise the financing and all relevant production contracts to ensure that the satellite will be launched during 2012.
Rather than seek to serve that 3% of the Australian population, Newsat plans to target a small number of high-value capacity-hungry enterprise customers such as oil and mining companies.
While Newsat has now chosen to eschew playing a part in the NBN project, its Australian peers Optus and KaComm are sure to seek an active role, and with HNS unlikely to be first foreign company to offer its services, there should be plenty of activity down under over the next year.
*This magazine is, sadly, assistant editor Ronan Murphy’s last. Ronan is off to write about the fast-moving world of clean technology and we wish him all the best. I would like to thank him for all his hard work and am sure that his many contacts in the satellite community would do the same.
