Hughes Announces Satellite Video For The Enterprise

Hughes Network Systems Inc. has unveiled a satellite broadband solution featuring a package of video applications aimed at large IT enterprises. The multicasting application is available as an option to Hughes's DIRECWAY delivery platform.

The new Multimedia Services, announced Wednesday, delivers video via satellite for corporate television, Web conferencing, multimedia, and digital advertising.

"This is a huge multicasting capability for a low cost," said Douglas Medina, senior director of Hughes's product service marketing, in an interview. "We bypass the ILECs and all the different carriers." The DIRECWAY service enables enterprise customers to deliver a video message to thousands of access points simultaneously.

Medina said about 200 enterprise customers are currently using the service. "For instance, brokerage-industry customers are using DIRECWAY to multicast to thousands of brokerage sites across the country." Medina said some 55,000 end users are set up to receive the service. DIRECWAY is also catching on for telecommuting applications in regions where DSL and cable broadband is not available.

Medina said the new video offerings are a natural extension of DIRECWAY's virtual private network (VPN) technology, which was introduced in September. He noted that enterprises are using DIRECWAY for different applications, ranging from distance learning and training, to credit and back-office usage. "For the cost of two or three dial-up lines, you can get this always-on broadband service," he said.Hughes VPN Accelerator service operates seamlessly with the Nortel IPsec VPN industry standard, as well as with some Check Point and Cisco systems. The firm has said the service implements uniformly secure VPNs and eliminates latency constraints of earlier satellite-based VPNs.

Hughes Network Systems has teamed up with GTSI Corp. to offer the DIRECWAY service to federal, state and local governmental agencies. The Hughes-GTSI solutions meet government-specified security and reliability regulations, Hughes said.

Medina said the DIRECWAY service differs from most existing terrestrial broadband services, in that none are apparently capable of providing robust multimedia multicast transmissions. The new Multimedia Services feature operates as a network overlay that permits enterprises to deliver pre-stored or live digital video without using existing data-network capacity. Because the service supports next-generation video compression, such as MPEG4, Hughes said the service will remain viable in the future.

Hughes Network Systems is a wholly-owned subsidiary of DIRECTV Group, which in turn is owned by News Corp.