Ban geostationary satellites from the NBN, says O3b

Stuart Corner
Monday, 05 October 2009 04:05

IT Industry - Strategy

The planned O3b network will comprise multiple satellites at a height of 8000km, giving a roundtrip latency of a claimed 124ms compared to 550ms for a geostationary satellite.

Wyler claims that, with O3b's 124ms of round trip latency, and 62ms one way latency, voice, videoconferencing and interactive gaming and web sites will allow natural conversation. "Video conferencing for educational, business and medical uses require low latency so that users can interrupt, motion, and maintain proper lip synchronisation. Online gaming requires low latency where reflexes and response times are key to the enjoyment."

He concludes his submission by saying: "While there will be a lot of focus on the throughput of the links (ie 12mbps), we suggest you carefully specify the latency as no greater than 180ms to ensure everyone can both use and develop all of the exciting web 2.0 applications and beyond.

O3b Networks, a company headquartered in the UK's Channel Islands, was formed in 2008 with the stated aim of providing broadband services via a network of low earth orbit satellites (leosats) to the "other three billion" people (hence the name) mostly in developing countries who have limited Internet access. Its satellites are being built by French company Thales Alenia Space and are scheduled to be launched and in operation by late 2010.

O3b does not plan to provide direct links to individual users but to backhaul regional networks that are beyond the reach of fibre. While this concept might be suitable in many densely populated developing nations with poor infrastructure, it does not seem directly applicable to Australia where many of that 'last 10 percent' are very isolated from each other.

However, Wyler claims that "In the Australian environment a combination of terrestrial wireless and O3b satellites will be a cost effective way to reach the remaining households not connected by fibre. For significantly less than 10 percent of the [$43b NBN] budget, the remaining homes can be reached.