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Planned Ka-band Constellations
(This list does not attempt to be inclusive. Many Ka-band providers are omitted because they will be targeting specific nations or regions. Some of the largest of these Ka-band providers are reportedly in Cyprus, Germany, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, China and Tonga. Others failed to return phone calls or could not be located. There is also a phenomenon known as paper satellites-companies that are thought to be engaging in spec trum speculation as evidenced by the fact that they are hard to find and seem to have made little progress toward actual launch.

Astra, Societe Europeenne des Satellites. SES operates seven GEOs and expects to add three more by year's end. One of these new satellites, ASTRA 1H, will add 2 Ka-band transponders to its 28-32 Ku-band transponders. While the bulk of SES' traffic lies with television and radio broadcasts, the new Ka capabilities will support interactive applications. SES is one of the few, if not the only, European player taking advantage of newly opened Ka-band frequencies.

Astrolink, Lockheed Martin (See chart)

Celestri , Motorola and Matra Marconi (See chart, See Big 5 profiles)

CyberStar, Loral (See chart, See Big 5 profiles)

EchoStar, EchoStar Satellite Corp. EchoStar's FCC application calls for two GEO satellites with intersatellite links, with services including video telephony, videoconferencing, voice, on-line access and tele-imaging.

EuroSkyWay, Alenia Spazio. Alenia Spazio's EuroSkyWay is targeted at service providers, television broadcasters and ISPs and will include 45Gbps aggregate bandwidth from five GEOs offering on-demand as well as leased services. Upstream customer bandwidth is set at 144Kbps, 512Kbps and 2Mbps and antennas will range in size from the equivalent of a laptop to the size of a PC. Services are slated to begin this year through the ISIS prototype satellite and shared platforms, and the first EuroSkyWay satellite will be launched in early 2000, followed by a second satellite in a year. When the constellation is complete it will cover Europe, the Mediterranean Basin, Africa, East Europe and Asia and rely on onboard processing technology. The ISIS prototype focused on interactive television satellite use and relies on both the Ku band used for television distribution and the Ka-band for customer interaction.

EUTELSAT, a 44-member signatory organization, said last spring that by this time it would be offering Internet access at speeds up to 40Mbps per transponder. The service is to be commercialized by Telecom Italia and will rely on a DVD-MPEG2 PC card and a 60 centimeter antenna. Uplinks from the user must be handled using a modem and telephone line. EUTELSAT expected to have 11 satellites in orbit by the end of last year with four more under construction. EUTELSAT reportedly plans to have as many as 23 Ka-band satellites, but was unavailable to discuss its plans.

GE*Star, GE Capital subsidiary, GE Capital Americom. Americom is heading for the skies with a 9-satellite global GEO system in five orbital locations. GE*Star will cost from $3 to $3.5 billion and carry traditional broadcast services as well as multimedia and other data applications. Emmett Hume, senior marketing VP for GE Capital Americom, says the service will be marketed directly to ISPs as well as large businesses and organizations, with first service slated for 2001. User bandwidth options will start at T1 and extend up to 45Mbps and support will be provi ded for a wide range of protocols and interfaces. GE Capital Americom plans to provide managed services as well as archiving. Financing for the project will come from GE and partners that have yet to be announced. Pricing will be application dependent and terminal costs will range from $100 on the low end to $1,000-$5000 on the high end (based on bandwidth). Targeted applications include distance learning, web caching, educational and Web applications. GE*Star has obtained all necessary FCC and ITU authorizations and has begun work on frequency coordination.

Intelsat, Intelsat has obtained 10 Ka slots for broadband services but its board of governors is still examining just how those slots should be used. Ongoing discussions among Intelsat signatories concerning the spin-off/privatilization of part of its structure obviously plays into this decision-making. Intelsat signatories are expected to meet at the end of March to discuss the privatization issue. A congressional hearing regarding Intelsat is s lated for the first week of March.

KASTAR (Ladybugs), KASTAR Satellite Communications Corp. KASTAR Satellite Communications Corp. is one of the lesser known broadband players, although it has a Ka-band frequency assignment from the FCC. Marco Caceres, an analyst with the Teal Group, says the scanty flow of information out of KASTAR and the fact that its CEO is an attorney raise questions about the long-term prospects of the company.

KASTAR, however, recently upped its 4 GEO satellite ante with a sister-company FCC filing for a 20-MEO constellation. Caceres says he doesn't know how KASTAR founder David Drucker will obtain financing for both systems given that better known companies, like TRW, have had to cancel constellations for lack of funding. At the time of KASTAR's frequency filing it asked that financial qualifications be waived.

KASTAR's initial $517 million plan calls for launching two GEO satellites. Two more GEOs are also contemplated. Financial projections suggest that ISPs cou ld charge their customers $40 monthly for T1 access via KASTAR, but actual price estimates could not be obtained. The satellites are slated to have onboard processing and intersatellite links and to provide T1 bandwidth at a minimum. KASTAR literature states that the first two satellites should be in orbit prior to 2000. KASTAR points on its Web page to recent financial support via United Video Satellite Group Inc. Services. Voice data and video services are targeted at ISPs, direct broadcast systems, personal communication systems, wireless LANs, gaming, utilities, telemedicine and other users. Coverage area includes the U.S., Central and South America as well as parts of Europe and Mexico with spot beams from prime locations. Both satellites will cover all 50 states. The system is slated to support broadband ATM and rely on fixed terminals. Drucker says that the system will be linked with @contact, a 20-MEO Ka-band constellation for which an FCC application was recently filed.

Morning Star Satellite Co. Morning Star's FCC application calls for a GEO system offering high speed data, voice and interactive video to commercial and residential customers.

NetSat 28, NetSat 28 Co. NetSat's FCC application calls for one satellite with 48 transponders, providing up to T1 bandwidth options. Bent pipe technology is also referenced in the application.

OrbLink, Orbital Sciences Corp. Orbital Sciences will be among a handful of second generation broadband satellite service providers to launch a MEO system-a kind of middle ground between the latency inherent in GEOs and the complexity inherent in LEO (which require many more satellites to cover the globe).

Seven satellites and one spare are planned for the constellation, which is based on Orbital's STARBus lightweight GEO platform. While the ground to space system is based on Ka frequencies, intersatellite links will be via extremely high frequencies. Customer bandwidth options are slated at 1.5Mbps to 1.25Gbps with total capacity at 150,000 T 1 circuits.

The constellation, offering fixed-site services, is slated to be available as early as 2002 and will orbit at 9000 kilometers. Regional gateways are planned for areas of high population density. Each satellite includes 100 spot beams and two east-west inter-satellite links. Total estimated cost for the system is $900 million, which Orbital Sciences says is comparable to building two trans-Atlantic fiber cables providing less than 10 percent of OrbLink's total trunking capacity.

Orion, (Under acquisition by Loral), (See chart) Orion's FCC application called for eight orbital slots for services such as digital audio, voice and multimedia. Each satellite would have 25 fixed spot beams.

PanAmSat, Hughes. PanAmSat received FCC authorization for two GEOs to offer "a broad range of video programming as well as a range of data and services." Onboard processing and spot-beam coverage were included in PanAmSat's application. PamAmSat declined to participate in our survey.

Spac eway, Hughes (See chart, See Big 5 profiles)

SkyBridge, Alcatel (See chart, See Big 5 profiles)

Teledesic (See chart, See Big 5 profiles)

Wideband European Satellite Telecommunication (WEST), Matra Marconi. This constellation is a GEO/MEO system from Matra Marconi Space. Nine MEOs and two GEOs are proposed for the $2 billion Ka-band system. Services will begin in 2001 in Europe and neighboring areas and extend to other parts of the world by 2003. Near global visibility is eventually expected. Bidirectional links are contemplated at 2Mbps uplink and 10Mbps downlink for direct to home services and bidirectional 10Mbps links will serve bandwidth on demand requirements. Special services up to 155Mbps are also expected.

Matra Marconi sees WEST as a terrestrial alternative for serving areas lacking in terrestrial infrastructure as well as a way to quickly create corporate or other infrastructures. Matra Marconi envisions its GEOs as best suited for data broadcasting, electronic com merce, home shopping and its MEOs as best suited for distance learning, collaborative working, teleworking, LAN-to-LAN interconnection, and telemedicine. Online services fall somewhere between the GEO and MEO offerings.

WEST's ATM architecture relies on national gateways as well as "user megalinks" up to 155Mbps. For enterprise networking Matra Marconi sees its 10Mbps bidirectional links as particularly valuable for PC video conferencing and high speed data transfer, like CAD/CAM. The MEO system will rely on companion satellites passing off traffic in areas where signals would interfere with a GEO arc. Intersatellite links--two at 1.2Gbps between the GEOs and four at 622Mbps between the MEOs-are intrinsic to the architecture. The WEST constellation is based on the EUROSTAR 3000 GEO design.

Terminals will be GEO only or combined MEO/GEO, priced from $4,500 to $2,000, and with an antenna diameter from 0.6 meters to 1.5meters. The terminals will support 99.5 percent availability for individuals a nd businesses and 99.97 percent availability for megalinks.

Matra Marconi, one of Europe's largest space players, is also a partner with Motorola on the Celestri constellation.

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V-Band and Extremely High Frequency Participants

Because V-Band and EHF allocation recently got underway, most experts don't plan to see much more than regulatory activity in the near future-especially given that it took about three years for the mobile satellite industry to move from frequency allocation to reality. Because of the bandwidth these systems afford, they are primarily expected to be used for bandwidth intensive activities like trunking. This list is not inclusive.

Aster Satellite System, Spectrum Astro Inc. Spectrum Astro applied last fall to the FCC to license a five-slot GEO V-band constellation capable of supporting up to 25 birds (through frequency and polarization divers ity). The Gilbert, AZ., company hopes to pioneer a new breed of smaller GEOs and has also contracted to NASA for its smaller "Deep Space 1" satellite. Initial service is targeted for 2002 with point-to-point and point-to-multipoint communications up to 622 Mbps. The GEOs are slated to communicate via optical intersatellite links with each satellite covering an area about half the size of the U.S. Coverage will be via 48 spot beams, eight regional beams and two steerable beams. Target markets include telemedicine, telelearning, intranets, extranets, corporate training, video conferencing and business video. V-band frequencies for the system are 36-51.4 GHz.

CyberPath, Loral. (See main article)

Global Extremely High Frequency Satellite Network (GESN), TRW. GESN will rely on 19 satellites, four GEOS and 15 MEOS at 10,354 kilometers, between the two Van Allen (for a total of 1.3 terabits per second aggregate bandwidth). The fixed system, which is named GESN provisionally, is primarily targeted at t elcos and international carriers and has a build and launch cost of $3.4 billion. TRW will also make its network available to very large businesses or organizations with high multimedia usage. Since the FCC only recently began the evaluation process for millimeter-wave systems, launch dates, partners and other information is still scanty. It took about three years for the FCC to evaluate BIG LEO constellations. TRW estimates that it will begin GEO launches four years after FCC licensing and initiate service two months after that. The full constellation is expected to be in service about six years after FCC licensing. Terminal size will vary and pricing is not yet set. TRW sees itself providing service to areas that don't yet have major fiber cable heads-whether that's third-world countries or remote U.S. locations. (TRW also holds a $150 million stake in international mobile satellite provider ICO, following a decision to drop its own Odyssey constellation and legal actions against ICO).

Hughes' Expr essway, StarLynx and SpaceCast (See main article)

Japan's MPT is expected to elaborate some time soon on research it has commissioned regarding an extremely high frequency millimeter-wave LEO constellation. Japan is reportedly considering an $8.8 billion plan that would offer customer bandwidth options over portable terminals at speeds up to 2Mbps. Whether the effort, aimed primarily at imaging, ultimately materializes as a prototype or commercial system is apt to depend on financing. Masao Matsumoto, director of the Space Communications Policy Division of the Communications Policy Bureau of Japan's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, says technologies developed by the project are expected to be verified in space by 2005 with the goal of practical service by 2010.

Lockheed-Martin (See main article).

Orion (acquisition underway with Loral) (See main article).

SkyStation (See main article)

V-Stream, PanAmSat (Hughes). PanAmSat has asked the FCC for V-ban d for a 12-satellite for "high-power, flexible broadcast and telecommunications services after the year 2000. '' The application calls for 3 gigahertz of spectrum in the 50/40 GHz band. The system calls for on-board processing, spot beams and intersatellite links. PanAmSat has already received FCC authorization to operate Ka-band satellites in nine orbital slots.

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Traditional Frequencies, Non-Ka Broadband Offerings

(This list is not inclusive)

Comsat/Intelsat (See chart)

DirecPC (Enterprise), Hughes (See feature)

Helius (See DirecPC feature)

Orion (See chart)

PanAmSat, Hughes (See Big 5 Profile)

Turbosat, GE Capital Spacenet. This Ku- and C-band service was introduced last November and provides channel speeds up to 1.7 Mbps and outbound speeds up to 2Mbps with two-way remote antennas as small as 18 inches (for inbound speeds of 64Kbps). For 128Kbps inbound a 0.67 meter antenna is required and for speeds of 1.7 Mbps a 2.4-meter antenna is needed. By year's end outbound data rates will increase up to 20Mbps (through software and hardware enhancements on both earthstations and transmit groundstations). The service is over GEO satellites and GE Americom lays claim to having the largest North American satellite fleet. Customer names have yet to be announced for the new service. Terminals cost $80 to $140 per month per site based upon traffic characteristics. Telecommuter support is available, but only through volume arrangements. For instance, a service probably wouldn't be cost effective for under 100 telecommuter sites, according to a company spokesman. Turbosat can be connected via a PC or server. Turbosat competes directly with the newer Enterprise Edition of Hughes DirecPC. The initial lower-end DirecPC broadcast is allocated to specific applications and, therefore, effectively provides much less bandwidth.