Hughes demos broadband satellite solution for The Bush

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 03 November 2010 15:55

Business IT - Networking

Would-be NBN satellite builder, Hughes Network Systems, claims to have demonstrated, in Australia, how one of its broadband satellite terminals is able to support web browsing, streaming video, voice and videoconferencing applications simultaneously.

Hughes said it had "successfully demonstrated 16 Mbps of TCP throughput and over 20Mbps of UDP streaming throughput to a single HN9400 Ka-/Ku-band broadband satellite terminal...using broadband satellite capacity provided by Ipstar and SES World Skies."

Ramesh Ramaswamy, assistant vice president of international marketing at Hughes, said the HN9400 "can deliver even the most bandwidth-demanding services on today's satellites, while being future-proof for next-generation, high-throughput systems, making it the ideal platform to deliver broadband to underserved Australia today and into the future."

According to Hughes "The live demonstrations featured aggregate satellite Internet usage of 16Mbps and in addition, included simultaneous downloading from the Web of video clips, photos, software updates, and music; downloading streaming movies; VoIP; and point-to-point video conferencing - all delivered over the HN9400, a high-capacity, dual Ka-/Ku-band satellite platform."

According to information on Hughes website the HN9400 can operate with antennas ranging from 74cms to 180cms.

Hughes is hoping to win the contract, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, to build and launch two geostationary satellites for NBN Co and to this end set up a subsidiary in Australia earlier this year.

However it will take several years before NBN Co is able to deliver services via these planned satellites and in the mean time the company is looking for an interim solution to provide improved satellite broadband services to the most remote Australians.

NBN Co CEO, Mike Quigley told iTWire in August: "We have submitted proposals [for an interim satellite service] to the Government which they have considered and accepted and we are ploughing ahead with those. And you will see a series of proposals and tenders coming out from us." However nothing has been forthcoming on this issue since.