2 Satellite Launches Imminent, expect snakoil sales pitches

Sponge Bob

The amount of Sat BB capacity over Ireland is scheduled to increase dramatically in the next month assuming that two ultra high capacity satellite launch successfully in November ( ie that they don't blow up or malfunction).

These birds are called Hylas and Ka Sat. Packages are being announced in anticipations. Astra will not be able to match these guys so if one currently has an Astra2Connect package not a Tooway then don't bother reading any further. ka Sat will upgrade Tooway bandwidth...a lot.

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/news/avanti-announces-new-satellite-broadband-partners-for-hylas-1-10868.html

19 Oct 2010 | 08.24 Europe/London
After announcing its HYLAS 1 satellite is on track to be launched in November, Avanti is today announcing two new, regional ISPs in the UK which will sell its ‘up to’ 8Mbp/s service.

East Anglia’s InTouch Systems and Wales’ DSL Telecom have signed up to sell the 8Mb package which Avanti executives have hinted will cost around £25 per month when launched during the first quarter of 2011. Further details of packages, including the final confirmed monthly fee as well as usage allowances and hardware costs are expected to be announced nearer the time of launch.

The satellite launch was recently postponed from September to November but the company now claims the satellite is in French Guiana and is ready to be put in to geostationary orbit next month.

By the time it launches, Eutelsat is expecting to launch its ‘up to’ 10Mbp/s Tooway service through its KA-SAT satellite. Again, though, the final pricing and usage structure has yet to be announced. Its slower up to 4Mbp/s service is currently charged between £25-£35 per month and has a limit of less than 3Gb of data.

Astra will continue to offer its ‘up to’ 4Mb service for £30 per month.

watty

Hylas 1 is overhyped. It has quite wide spot and low capacity. Avanti will not have much capacity till Hylas2 is online. Launch date provisionally confirmed last month. It's supposed to be at 33.5W. It's part funded by ESA as an experimental platform. It also has Ku TV capacity.

Ka-Sat will be better than Mobile if you don't mind 800ms Latency :eek: (Launch end of December). It won't have a high Cap though. It has about 5x the UK/Ireland capacity of Hylas and about 20 to 30 times overall capacity of Hylas 1. Maybe more. Ka-Sat @ 9E will have highest Sat capacity ever launched (nearly x1000 older satellites!) until its "sister" satellite Viasat1 is launched some time in 2011 for USA. Ka-Sat & ViaSat1 are purely commercial partnership ventures. Ka-Sat between Viasat and Eutelsat. Ka-Sat is proven design, scaled up, based on two satellites delivering WildBlue "two way" Internet in the USA with about 60+ spots between them. An earlier Hotbird @13E with 4 x Ka Spots was the test platform. (used by current Tooway service).

Dual feed Hylas1 & Sky/Freesat is nearly impossible. Dual feed Sky/Freesat and Ka-Sat is plausible.

Next year about 6 Ka Band Launches
2012 about 12 Ka Band Launches.

It's likely Hylas1 needs a bigger dish than Ka-Sat for the Terminal.

It takes a while to establish correct Orbital slot after launch. Then there is Test and Comissioning, so Hylas1 may not be available till late December/Early January, and Ka-Sat till Feb/March. Assuming launch success.

You would not easily get insurance for anything depending on either launch. Though Proton (Ka-Sat) and Soyuz (probably rather than Ariane) are among the top 3 reliable launchers along with Ariane.

yuloni

This post has been deleted.

watty

No, Hylas1 is mid November to late November, (Avanti. possibly mostly ESA funded as research). Yes it was what 3 planned to use, anyone knowledgeable in Sat industry never believed Hylas1 would be ready by start of NBS. October is end of NBS rollout!

Ka-Sat is 20th or 21st December 2010 (Tooway: Viasat/Eutelsat, resold by Bentley Walker, Digiweb and SBI)




Tight Cap compared to DSL higher packs, Metro or UPC Cable.

crawler

I guess it is not bad news for those looking to get any form of higher speed link and simply cant get anything else or those who want a redundant failover connection for high availability type thingys...

watty

I'd rather vsat for backup. Esp. if the outage is local ESB. Many Mobile Masts have limited backup power. Mobile is easily overwhelmed by traffic in local Emergency situations as it has low local capacity.

Sponge Bob

Eutelsat just lost the W3B Tv satellite launched this week. Speculation is that the loss was caused after the sat and the launch vehicle were mated in recent months and will possibly lead to delays in the Ka Sat launch as everything is treble checked just in case.

On the other hand it may give us a firework display early next week. Maybe even a double bill with the Shuttle Launch in our direction scheduled for Weds Teatime ( flying over Ireland just after 6pm)

watty

Though Ka-Sat is different launch vehicle (Proton vs Ariane), different satellite builder (EADS Astrium vs Thales Alenia Space) and different design to W3B. The Ariane launcher (rocket) isn't implicated beyond a question about was the Satellite fairing of the Ariane installed correctly. The other satellite in the same launch is operating fine.

Eutelsat's share price has fallen 6%. W3B will be destroyed by de-orbit into South Pacific 1st November 2010. It has not enough fuel for the Transfer "burns" to take it from Launch orbit to Geosynchronous orbit, even for short life.

Avanti's Hylas1 has been put back from 15th November 2010 to 25th November 2010. It was part built by EADS Astrium (the builder of Ka-Sat) and Indian ISRO, unlike Ka-Sat it's an experimental design.

See http://www.techtir.ie/blog/watty/ka-sat-countdown (with links to detail reports on W3B) and http://www.techtir.ie/blog/watty/hylas-launch

Sponge Bob

That is their second consecutive launch failure into that 16e orbital slot. While they got W2M up to the correct orbit in December 2008 the bird was faulty and hung around doing nothing for a year. Then an older bird in that slot, W2, died completely around 7 years into a 12 year lifespan and so W2M was commissioned on a limited basis in January 2010.

W2M was packaged by the same people who prepared Hylas.

watty

Yes. W2M has a PSU problem.

Other thread
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=68763007&postcount=778

Seems a shame they can't stick W3B into a polar orbit. But no useful cameras or radar. Still even a sun syncronous polar orbit would give lots of power but maybe only 10 mins comunications per earth station. I suppose the ground staff costs outweigh anything that can be done on a lower orbit.

Or add it as a backup solar generator and dishes on the ISS. It's LEO.

Sponge Bob

Not strictly relevant but Sealaunch emerged from Bankruptcy the same day that W3B was launched. They went into bankruptcy ( unsurprisingly) after this happened ....although that vessel was fixed and operational within a year :cool:

watty

Ka-Sat in Orbit, Telemetery running and solar panels partially deployed.
82 Spots, effectively 450 Mbps per spot (900Mbps, but what goes up must come down and vice versa)
Digital Cinema Distribution as well as Internet and Saorsat.
Expected to enter service end of April 2011 http://www.techtir.ie/blog/watty/ka-sat-launch

Ka-Sat will only be any use for Internet if they sell 1/10th to 1/6th as much as the number of users it's claimed to support http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=69754613#post69754613


Time will tell.