Monday, November 19, 2012

Broken Hill site of teleport facility for NBN’s satellite service

NBN Co has chosen Broken Hill in New South Wales as the site of a satellite ground station to be built in support of the broadband project’s longer term satellite service. Already, NBN’s interim satellite offering has been servicing over 17,000 premises down under, with download speeds of 6mbps being sold wholesale to several Internet by satellite providers.

Broken Hill is considered the capital of the outback, and the new satellite ground facility will be built 9 kilometers away from the city, which is also connected via fibre to the nationwide broadband network. The facility will join the nine others being constructed across Australia that will uplink to the Ka band satellites also being built by NBN, and slated for a 2015 launch

Around 20 to 30 construction workers will be employed during the construction of the ground station in Broken Hill. Accordingly around 300 will be employed for the building of all ten satellite ground stations. Last month, NBN Co announced that it had already awarded contracts to two companies for the project.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Inmarsat picks L-3 as Global Xpress launch partners

British satellite communications company Inmarsat announced yesterday that it had chosen L-3 Global Communications Solutions as its launch partner for the land satellite terminals of the Global Xpress service. The new broadband service from Inmarsat aims to improved network activity as well as extended coverage. Global Xpress will be the first Ka band satellite service that will offer global mobile broadband coverage. It will deliver high speed internet on satellite solutions through smaller and more affordable ground terminals. According to Inmarsat the GX service will be delivered using three satellites the company operates.

L-3 GCS was chosen by Inmarsat because they are one of the leading suppliers of VSAT systems in the world. Since the GX technology will run on Ka band, L-3 provides the expertise and cutting-edge equipment that will be combined with Inmarsat’s own global managed services. The US-based company which deploys specializes satellite communications solutions will be providing the L-3 GCS' Panther, and Hawkeye terminals for the Global Xpress. Both companies expressed excitement in the delivery of the high-speed technology which has been designed to be reliable, especially with the transportable terminals which can be used for all sorts of missions.