December 27th saw the successful launch, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, of a new communications satellite that aims to bring high-speed broadband Internet across Europe and the Mediterranean Basin. The satellite was taken up in an ILS Proton-M vehicle, which lifted off at 0:51 Moscow time (21.51 GMT Sunday) and released into orbit nine hours later.
The launch was originally scheduled for December 20th but was postponed to allow more time to investigate the failure of another Proton-M launch on December 5, which resulted in the loss of three Glonass-M satellites after the vehicle veered off course and landed in the Pacific Ocean. The mission marked the 8th commercial launch for ILS in 2010.
The satellite, manufactured by EADS Astrium and known as Ka-Sat, is due to begin operation in 2011 and joins two other broadband internet satellites, SkyTerra-1 and Hylas-1, already put in orbit in recent weeks.
The new satellite differs from traditional broadband satellites by using signals, known as spot beams, that focus an area a few hundred kilometers across instead of covering an entire continent. The result is greatly increased capacity. Each of Ka-Sat’s 82 spot beams will have a capacity of around 900Mbps, although this will be shared between all users, and the entire satellite will have a capacity of 70Gbps.
Eutelsat, the satellite’s operator, already offers a satellite broadband service, which it launched in 2009. The service, known as TooWay, currently provides download speeds of around 3.6Mbps. By launching Ka-Sat, the service can be upgraded to provide download and upload speeds of around 10Mbps and 4Mbps respectively.
Both SkyTerra-1, which covers North America, and Hylas-1, covering the UK, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Eastern Europe, work using spot beams. SkyTerra-1, which is based on the same basic platform as Ka-Sat, uses 500 spot beams while Hylas-1 uses 8.
One advantage of the new service is that it can bring broadband services to isolated rural areas that conventional broadband, based on ADSL, cannot reach. For example, it is envisaged that Ireland will be a potential client for the new service to help it bring digital television to areas that are currently DTT blackspots.
