Sponsored Links

Internet Dedicated Satellites, will it change things?

Will internet dedicated satellite improve sat BB?


  • Total voters
    29
  • Poll closed .

micronet

ISP Rep
"Broadband use is usually using small amounts of spare capacity on satellite transponders"

E-bird is the first satellite that does not do this, the entire capacity of the satellite is simply dedicated to broadband (many similar satellites are also due for launch),

This allows Eutelsat to incorporate new satellite internet technology including new bandwidth managment features and masses of extra capacity compared to a satellite that uses small amounts of spare capacity on the transponder. This means that bandwidth on this satellite is much much cheaper and better managed, simply because there is so much of it. So this means millions more users who can use the service without it slowing to standstill.

Do you agree that this means great improvements for satellite broadband,

or

do you think it is an empty promise that will not prevail. give your reasons.
 
Its an interesting question, one I suspect that Eutelsat cannot even even answer, as they have not had this alledged system at capacity.

I voted "Only in the Short term" , as every satellite company I have experienced over the last 4 years, all made similar claims, all started out with an unlimited service, all eventually used agressive "Bandwidth Management features" and applied caps, all ended up forcing "Return Path Technology" onto their customer base, and all made false promises with regard to improved future capacity and system performance....

As a reseller, what guarantees could you give the satellite using public, that Eutelsat will bring online "this extra capacity" before maximising profit on any transponders that are full ?
 
Pwablo said:
Its an interesting question, one I suspect that Eutelsat cannot even even answer, as they have not had this alledged system at capacity.

I voted "Only in the Short term" , as every satellite company I have experienced over the last 4 years, all made similar claims, all started out with an unlimited service, all eventually used agressive "Bandwidth Management features" and applied caps, all ended up forcing "Return Path Technology" onto their customer base, and all made false promises with regard to improved future capacity and system performance....

As a reseller, what guarantees could you give the satellite using public, that Eutelsat will bring online "this extra capacity" before maximising profit on any transponders that are full ?


The bigger concern I would have is that the economics do not add up. All Eutel state is the Satellite is dedicated to Broadband which leaves it pretty open to use it for a lot of things TV for instance. A TV channnel might need 1Mb or 2Mb and can transmit to millions. 1Mb for Broadband perhaps 50 to a 100 users. Guess what brings in the most money.
 
Sponsored Links
I have to agree with pwablo, money talks and they have to please the shareholders in the end. and this multimillion pound investment has to be payed back. And in the old shop terminology of my dad, stackem high and sellem cheap.
The place where it will be affected on this system will always be in "best effort" and the more users on the transponder, the slower that will get.
 
those are are all very valid comments, of course we all agree multi million pound investments need their payback, but you don't forget that satellite internet technology is in its relative infancy, and all technologies of all sorts are both restrictive and expensive in their relative infancy's, this makes it extremely difficult to deploy these technologies on a large scale and the first organisations to crack these problems are the ones who make make the big time profits, but of course this takes initial large investment. An example of this would be how the Japanese organisations simply take existing technology and spend a hell of alot of time and money to improve it, once the improvements have been made it simply means that they can give what no one else can at the same or better price and that is very profitable.

This is the key to Eutelsat's investment future in internet technology (we own a small amount of shares, so we know) - They simply know to make bigger profits, you need to deploy satellite broadband on a massive scale, but to get these users you need provide a service that is unrestrictive and affordable, otherwise people simply won't buy it on a very large scale.

The mobile phone is a great example, when Motorola and Mercury made the first small and affordable phone, they made masses of profits and this gave the green light to masses of companies to deploy the technology on a large scale and make massive profits and offer something better to the consumer.
 
Can I ask you again Micronet ...

As a reseller, what guarantees could you give the satellite using public, that Eutelsat will bring online "this extra capacity" before maximising profit on any transponders that are full ?

Unfortunately your examples dont hold very tight water. The exploitable market size alone for mobiles phones, even in the early days was vastly larger than it will ever be for satellite internet. Further too this, the "slowly maturing" structure and technological advancements that satellite internet has taken over the past 4 years, has offered virtually nothing better to the customer. If anything past and current technological advancements have resulted in less for the customer, as the majority of these have had the primary aim of maximising "payback", even if that meant developing technology that hijacked the end users terrestrial bandwidth without their consent !! Does this not suggest that satellite internet is either, not profitable enough, or the suppliers want a quick return on their investment, or perhaps both ? Regardless of the strategy for capacity, users and potential users need to be guaranteed of far much more than quotas, caps, and FUP's.

IMO Satellite providers are too focused on fast returns, and the measures frequently taken to ensure this, appear to have no ethical ends. I have to assume that Eutelsat may adopt a similar stance, if not now, perhaps in the future.

Please feel free to indicate the merits of your service that make it unrestrictive and affordable.
 
Would you say satellite internet is getting a good unbringing in its infancy ? :shrug:
 
Last edited:
Sponsored Links
Pwablo they need a fast return, this multimillion pound investment will fall out of the sky in ten years when the satellite runs out of orbit fuel. cant exactly goto BP to refill
 
In that case, I hope you havnt bought too many shares micronet :laugh:
 
The garantee that Eutelsat will add this extra bandwidth is that the simple facts are that millions of people across Europe have no broadband internet access for the forseeable future which makes it massive market, of course the market is not as big as the mobile phone industry but i was just using this as an example, you are still speaking of massive market in relative terms, and Eutelsat know that satellite broadband on mass consumer scale has not taken off due to the fact that the service is far too restricitive and expensive. But break these barriers with technological advancements and satellite broadband becomes a viable market to break into the mass market barrier. Simply more and more people will use it as it gets better and cheaper as with alot of other technologies.

For the first time they have 22+ transponders dedicated to broadband, with advancements that have allowed them to utilise the internet only satellite to provide substantually increased amount of bandwidth that is specially dedicated and managed for broadband on each transponder. They can simply now provide much more managed bandwidth on each transponder. So its like adding 20 lanes (more bandwidth) to the M25 and banning the road works (the other services ie TV,tracking etc offered on satellites), the congestion will be a thing of the past and its capacity for users will increase in a big way, of course you are thinking "until that fills up lol" but the increased capacity will keep it significantly congestion free until 10 years or less time when the satellite is replaced and they feel the need to add more lanes (bandwidth) and send another satellite with even more capacity designed to take the predicted high amount of users for the next 10 or so years.

Eutelsat know that to be profitable, satellite internet has to be good -there is no 2 ways about it , and Eutelsat are company that takes this market seriously as a profit making venture, the buffs at Eutelsat have made things change for Eutelsat in this way, not long ago internet was low down on the Eutelsat list but its shot to the top since these advancements have been made. It seems these guys have figured out a way to make more money longterm and short term by being able to offer a good service for much, much more users than was previously possible.

And don't forget they are one of the worlds largest satellite organisations. :)
 
Last edited:
And without doing the exact maths but at the symbol rate and fec with the amount of transponders, the whole satellite could carry about the same amount of data as a single BT fat pipe for one isp, 600-650Mbps.
 
Sponsored Links
micronet said:
The garantee that Eutelsat will add this extra bandwidth is that the simple facts are that millions of people across Europe have no broadband internet access for the forseeable future which makes it massive market, of course the market is not as big as the mobile phone industry but i was just using this as an example, you are still speaking of massive market in relative terms, and Eutelsat know that satellite broadband on mass consumer scale has not taken off due to the fact that the service is far too restricitive and expensive. But break these barriers with technological advancements and satellite broadband becomes a viable market to break into the mass market barrier. Simply more and more people will use it as it gets better and cheaper as with alot of other technologies.

For the first time they have 22+ transponders dedicated to broadband, with advancements that have allowed them to utilise the internet only satellite to provide substantually increased amount of bandwidth that is specially dedicated and managed for broadband on each transponder. They can simply now provide much more managed bandwidth on each transponder. So its like adding 20 lanes (more bandwidth) to the M25 and banning the road works (the other services ie TV,tracking etc offered on satellites), the congestion will be a thing of the past and its capacity for users will increase in a big way, of course you are thinking "until that fills up lol" but the increased capacity will keep it significantly congestion free until 10 years or less time when the satellite is replaced and they feel the need to add more lanes (bandwidth) and send another satellite with even more capacity designed to take the predicted high amount of users for the next 10 or so years.

Eutelsat know that to be profitable, satellite internet has to be good -there is no 2 ways about it , and Eutelsat are company that takes this market seriously as a profit making venture, the buffs at Eutelsat have made things change for Eutelsat in this way, not long ago internet was low down on the Eutelsat list but its shot to the top since these advancements have been made. It seems these guys have figured out a way to make more money longterm and short term by being able to offer a good service for much, much more users than was previously possible.

And don't forget they are one of the worlds largest satellite organisations. :)


Im glad you are convinced, but I feel you may have missed the point I was trying to make.
Capacity (M25 :rolleyes: ) isnt the issue, its the degree and direction in which the bandwidth may be managed. As a reseller you cannot guarantee that Eutelsats "advancements in technology" are not a just another rekindled get rich fast scheme, like return path technology? Nor can you guarantee that the business model that will be used, won't ever require the use of aggressive port throttling, and capping. Basically, from this perspective there is very little you can guarantee, other than the fact that Eutelsat are very serious about making massive profits from this venture, and they have invested a lot in the form of capacity. Nothing we hav'nt all heard before I'm afraid.
 
Yes we garantee improvements, because Eutelsat have. New bandwidth management features have been brought on board, I disagree with you that massive amount of additional capacity is not the issue but i agree regarding the management of bandwidth because both are important, new management features include ways to stop heavy streaming in best effort that is famous for gunning down even ADSL networks. The way these new features kick in on best efforts include new predictable bandwidth management feature that ensures heavy and light users get great value for their buck, how does it work? lets say you are a downloading a 3GB file at 1000kbits a sec, you are taking a substantial amount of bandwidth from the system, at a constant rate of 1000kbits you then might notice a very rare and short drop in speed (it drops rarely for less than 1sec to 300kbits or less then instantly goes back up to 1000kbits) what is happening is that the speeds are being shared for a very short period of time to someone who is just web browsing, because all they need is a short sharp burst of 150Kbytes to ensure instant browsing, they will most likely look at the page for a while and require 0.0K bandwidth for this time, this means that the light users are given a short burst of bandwidth and the downloaders are stll downloading at fantastic speed and heavy streamers are being restricted because it is taken in turns between all best effort users to ensure a the short drops in speed only slightly affect the overall average speed of downloading the file. This simply means that this new system can work out wether you are streaming, downloading a large file or just web browsing thus allowing much better management of the increased bandwidth.
 
IMO it sounds no different to basic algorythms used by most other satellite suppliers, and look at the mess they are currently in.

When you have something new to take to the table, I am sure that there are plenty people who will be prepared to try your service, however, to me, as it stands, Eutelsat would have to be offering a package that is substancially better than todays sub standard offerings, and also make some firm guarantees that "Return Path Technology" and "Agressive port throttling" will never be employed. This would clearly demonstrate that they were serious about bringing a better product to the customer.

Nathans mentioned "stackem high and sell em cheap" the phrase I like is "you cant polish a turd, no matter how hard you rub it"
(no offense intended, purely an opinion)
 
Unless there are fundermental changes in the costs of putting satellites into Orbit the cost will remain high and have to be recovered somehow. There is also the latency problem which is unlikely to be resolved. In my view satellite will remain for the foresable future a poor choice for Broadand and I don't see that changing. Its the wrong technology for the product. Unless the charges are very high which would price it out of the residential market you are always going to be stuck with the problem of too many users for the available bandwidth. The solution as it always is will be rationing it by one means or another.
 
I am trying tounderstand how you can say that satellite is the wrong solution for broadband.
BB was intended for faster web access & mail/downloads.
The only people that I ever come across that seem to have a problem with sat are gamers.
We are able to offer a business solution that will work well with nearly every application.
Also, the reports I am getting back from WISP's using our service for backhaul have been excellent.
Customers are reporting incredible speeds on the community bb package.
The only issues we ever get are with gamers & some p2p users.
cheers
 
Sponsored Links
evs67uk said:
I am trying tounderstand how you can say that satellite is the wrong solution for broadband.
BB was intended for faster web access & mail/downloads.
The only people that I ever come across that seem to have a problem with sat are gamers.
We are able to offer a business solution that will work well with nearly every application.
Also, the reports I am getting back from WISP's using our service for backhaul have been excellent.
Customers are reporting incredible speeds on the community bb package.
The only issues we ever get are with gamers & some p2p users.
cheers


Yes fast downloads are possible although bandwidth limitations are usually a problem. Latency is not just an issue for gamers it can effect many business applications. VPN's are difficult to use on Satellite as is video conferencing as well as many real time database applications such as MRP & ERP systems
 
This is the reason why we have addressed the vpn issue with our fully managed service.
Also, our levels on our FUP means that customers don't have a problem with any capping.
 
evs67uk said:
I am trying tounderstand how you can say that satellite is the wrong solution for broadband.
BB was intended for faster web access & mail/downloads.
The only people that I ever come across that seem to have a problem with sat are gamers.
We are able to offer a business solution that will work well with nearly every application.
Also, the reports I am getting back from WISP's using our service for backhaul have been excellent.
Customers are reporting incredible speeds on the community bb package.
The only issues we ever get are with gamers & some p2p users.
cheers

And thats noted, it has to be offered as a business solution because of the sheer cost of providing a decent connection. If you wanted to offer a home service then i bet it would be fairly unusable as like most sat isp's because of the cost nature of satellite, you would really need to contend it and cap usage etc. would you agree with that?
As far as wisp packages goes, this is just like a company buying your package for 20 odd computers, its just upto them to share out the bandwidth.

Its very hard to compare like to like, its not as if sat isp's will even quote you for a 50:1 1Mb package like bt or any other adsl isp etc will
 
Web Buddy said:
Unless there are fundermental changes in the costs of putting satellites into Orbit the cost will remain high and have to be recovered somehow. There is also the latency problem which is unlikely to be resolved. In my view satellite will remain for the foresable future a poor choice for Broadand and I don't see that changing. Its the wrong technology for the product. Unless the charges are very high which would price it out of the residential market you are always going to be stuck with the problem of too many users for the available bandwidth. The solution as it always is will be rationing it by one means or another.

although the cost of shooting the satellite into orbit remains the same, with an internet dedicated satellite they can increase the amount of Unicast bandwidth per transponder many times over, and add many more tranponders, this means that they can cover their costs by offering sheer amounts of bandwidth and can add users of various types to many transponders (1&2 way users) , so before when you only had 1 or 2 transponders per satellite that got full very quickly, you now have over 22+ transponders so each transpnder can handle millions more users because of the sheer waves of bandwidth on each transponder, once a transponder is coming near to its capacity they have 21+ other bandwidth rich transponders to choose from. So rationing should be thing of the past.

Remember an organisation like Eutelsat would not just waste an entire multi-million pound satellite on just internet services if they knew it would not offer anything better than just wacking a pinch of spare bandwidth on a transponder or two, when they could be offering a range of other services on the satellite. Its simple, the amount of bandwidth they can offer now on an internet dedicated satellite is so great that it makes it possible to make a much larger amount of money by simply being able to offer an improved service to many more users than was previously possible. These facts make internet via satellite a major part of Eutelsat's agenda.
 
Top
Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Vodafone UK ISP Logo
Vodafone £24.00 - 26.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
NOW UK ISP Logo
NOW £24.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £25.99
145Mbps
Gift: £50 Reward Card
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £17.00
200Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Youfibre UK ISP Logo
Youfibre £23.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Sponsored Links
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (6026)
  2. BT (3639)
  3. Politics (2721)
  4. Business (2439)
  5. Openreach (2405)
  6. Building Digital UK (2330)
  7. Mobile Broadband (2146)
  8. FTTC (2083)
  9. Statistics (1901)
  10. 4G (1816)
  11. Virgin Media (1764)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1582)
  13. Fibre Optic (1467)
  14. Wireless Internet (1462)
  15. 5G (1407)
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms  ,  Privacy and Cookie Policy  ,  Links  ,  Website Rules