In Global Peace Through The Global University
System
2003 Ed. by T. Varis, T. Utsumi, and W. R. Klemm
University of Tampere, Hameenlinna, Finland
THE FUTURE OF BROADBAND SATELLITE
COMMUNICATION
Joseph N. Pelton
George Washington University
and
The Arthur C. Clarke Institute of
Telecommunications and Information
If
humankind can avoid highly destructive uses of technology such as nuclear and
chemical and biological weapons, the 21st century could represent a
golden age of human scientific progress in terms of speed and range of
innovation. The Internet within
two decades will allow access to a thousand times more information than it does
today and at much higher speeds.
Broadband access to informational and educational systems at incredible
speeds should be increasingly affordable and accessible around the globe. Today some two billion people, a third of the world's population, have limited or no access to basic education, health care, electrical power, potable water, communications or modern electronic forms of information. By the next
century one must hope that everyone on our planet has fulfilled these
fundamental needs.
An
important part of the ongoing economic, technological and social revolution
that has come with the Internet Age are the opportunities that are provided by
the newest forms of satellite communications technology and applications. Although fiber optic networks are a key
part of the new information infrastructure, there are limits to what
terrestrial cable systems can accomplish.
Fiber, terrestrial wireless, and satellite systems will work in tandem
to provide key needs for the future.
There are
currently a myriad of key new developments occurring in the satellite field in
Japan, the United States, Europe and other parts of the developed and
developing world. These rapid
technological advances, however, are accompanied by challenging issues related
to globalism and international cooperation, techno-terrorism, new demanding
types of broadband applications, trade policy concerns, frequency allocations,
intellectual property, and regulatory and institutional reform. Although this chapter focuses primarily
on technology, it is important to note that policy, regulatory and economic
issues will have a key role in making satellite services available on a broad
global basis to those who need these capabilities most.
Many
centuries of scientific and engineering development led to the development of
communications satellite technologies and systems. Key milestones along the way include:
Archetus of Tarentum developed the idea of steam-based jet
propulsion in the 3rd century B.C.
Chinese inventors developed prototype rocketry in the Middle
Ages.
Sir Isaac Newton discovered the universal laws of
gravitation and computed escape velocities during the Late Renaissance.
Samuel Morse and Alexander Graham Bell developed the
electric telegraph and the telephone in the middle of the 19th century.
James Clerk Maxwell developed in the second half of the 19th
century the basic theoretical formulas that explain electro-magnetic behavior.
Marconi developed the basic concepts of electronic radio
communications at the turn of the 20th century.
Tsiolokovsky, Ley, Goddard and Von Braun developed modern
rocketry concepts during the first part of the 20th century.
Arthur C. Clarke developed the detailed telecommunications
and orbital concepts for a geosynchronous global satellite system in 1945.
Shockley, Bardeen et al developed the transistor in the late
1940s. This enabled the practical
development of lightweight and reliable computers and telecommunications
components that allowed the design and launch of unmanned communications
satellites.
Finally in the late 1950s the age of manmade satellites began. Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite, was launched by the Soviet Union in October 1957. This was followed in rapid succession by the first communications satellites (Score, 1958; Courier 1B, 1960, Telstar, 1962, and Syncom 1B (the first geosynchronous satellite in 1963)).
From the
outset, satellite telecommunications made a direct impact on the social and
economic development of the world.
The deployment of Early Bird (or INTELSAT I) in geosynchronous orbit in April 1965 immediately doubled the world's international telephone capabilities by adding 240 voice circuits across the Atlantic Ocean. For the first time in human history,
networks could also routinely send live broadcasts of television across an
ocean. The initial pictures were only
fuzzy black and white images, but the age of global satellite television was
ushered in by images of Dr. Michael DeBekey performing open heart surgery in
Houston, Texas while surgeons observed via satellite television in Geneva,
Switzerland. Other firsts were "live" trans-Atlantic coverage of the Le Mans auto race in France and the various live exchanges between Heads of State across the Atlantic in 1965 and across the Pacific on INTELSAT II satellites in 1967. Within a blink of the eye, the phrase "Live Via Satellite" entered the modern lexicon.
A spurt in
international communications followed in the 1970s. This was fueled by increasingly powerful and higher capacity
satellites and then later by fiber optic submarine cables. International communications in two
decades increased in capacity by more than 100 times. This growth in global communication, at least in part, led to a leap in international trade - at all levels (i.e., commodities, products and goods, and even services). At
the domestic level, satellites proved to be more important as an entertainment
media. In many countries,
satellite communications networks particularly served to increase national and
regional television news coverage and also led to the rapid growth of Cable
television programming. Satellites
have also been used for nearly 40 years now for both education and tele-health
services. As noted above, the very
first satellite television transmission was to support medical training and new
surgical techniques. Educational
broadcasts soon followed in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan and Europe.
Today the
Chinese National Television University that began with experiments under the
Project Share experiments of Intelsat
in 1985, now reaches millions of students and teachers everywhere in the vast
China subcontinent. In the second most populous country, India, the INSAT system reaches an estimated million students with its tele-education broadcasts. The reliance of satellites for educational purposes using
conventional analog technology is now extremely widespread. Perhaps a majority of all the countries
of the world and certainly the largest countries in terms of population all use
analog (and in some cases digital satellite television broadcasts) to support
distance education. On a daily
basis over 20 million students are today relying on satellite tele-education
for at least a part of their education.
Despite
these gains, many problems remain.
Some countries have to pay extremely high tariffs for simple 56
kilobit/second data and voice links when broadband services at 1.5
Megabits/second or 2.0 Megabits/second are available in more economically
developed countries at almost the same price. In short, as the Global University System and others have
found the largest barrier to cost effective satellite communications are
regulatory systems and tariff structures and not the availability of new
satellite technology. Nevertheless
the continuing surge forward in satellite technology continues to put pressure
on all concerned to low the tariffs for satellite services, particularly for
health and education. The
initiatives by the World Bank (IBRD) in this regard now appear on the verge of
paying off with wide spread availability of satellite capacity for social
services.
Many
observers of telecommunications development have seen the highly competitive
side of the parallel development of satellite communications and fiber optic
cable systems. In fact, the rapid
development of both fiber and satellite technology would likely have been much
slower without the competitive demand to deliver more and more capacity at
lower and lower cost. Just as the computer industry has generally followed Moore's Law of a doubling of capacity every 18 months for the last quarter century, satellites and fiber have maintained this type of exponential growth in performance as well.
In 1965,
prior to the launch of Early Bird, there were less than 300 international
telephone circuits in operation and no transoceanic television broadcasting
capability. Now there are over one
million international satellite circuits in operation, and many millions of
fiber optic circuits available. The
number of full-time national, regional and international satellite television
channels in operation on a global basis exceeds 12,000. What is particularly notable in this
last statistic is that the first full-time international satellite television
channel did not begin to operate until 1984. Most recently the evolution of digital television channels
(and particularly MPEG 2 standards that allowed a video broadcast transmission
at 6 megabits/second) have created a major spurt of growth in this arena.
Many other
new applications and services have stimulated the continuing rapid growth of
satellite communications throughout the 1990s. Some of the very most important of these new services and
applications are:
Internet: The amount of Internet-related traffic on the INTELSAT
system alone has grown from 7% of all traffic in 1998 to over 20% of all
traffic today. Most of this
Internet Protocol (IP) traffic is operating on via digital video broadcast
systems that can provide digital down-linking to low cost 1 meter earth
stations at speeds up to 70 Megabits/second. Major gains in IP based traffic have also been achieved on
the Panamsat, Loral, SES Global, New Skies and Eutelsat systems. The desire for Internet access
continues to grow and mature via satellites, terrestrial wireless and fiber
optic networks. Advanced data,
voice and multi-media services via the IP protocol will likely lead to the need
for even more advanced, broader band satellite systems in the 21st
century.
Virtual Private Corporate Networks and Intranet-based
LANs: The rapid evolution of so-called Very
Small Aperture Terminals (VSATs) and now micro-terminals or Ultra Small
Aperture Terminals (USATs) have made satellites ideal for supporting integrated
corporate voice, data, multi-media networking via these small customer premise
terminals that allow corporate based Wide Area Networks (WANs) to interconnect
together and also connect directly to the Internet. It is key to note that there is at least ten (if not twenty)
times more information on dedicated Intranets than on the Internet itself.
Multi-media and Bandwidth on Demand: In today's global economy, worldwide enterprises operate on a 24 hour a day basis in scores of countries around the world. The flexibility of satellites to
provide multiple connections and provide narrow band to broadband services on
demand have contributed to their growth.
Initially this traffic was essentially to support business, but today
these networks are supporting medical and health care, governmental services,
education and training and an ever widening range of applications.
Big Science: The space-based Earth Observation Satellite (EOS) System
(also known as Mission to Planet Earth) will provide global remote sensing and
earth observation data as never before possible. The next ten years of operation of the EOS system will
produce an estimated 3,000 terabytes of information. This massive amount of information (equivalent to 1500
Libraries of Congress or thousands of time the amount of information on the
Internet) is only one of the applications that support terabyte data
systems. By 2020 there will even
be research and science projects that deal with petabyte databases (i.e., at
least 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of data.) Support for such "big science" projects will require huge amounts of satellite communications relay. Even if so-called "pre-processing of data" on-board the satellites can reduce the amount of total information to some degree, the demands on satellite communications by big science projects will be enormous. Today we have just a few
projects of this size, like the Hubble Telescope and globally interconnected
observatories or the Earth Observation System Data Information System (EOS-DIS)
etc. Tomorrow there will dozens of
such huge information and communications collection and processing projects.
Mobile Communications and Remote Access Requirements: The most surprising
telecommunications development of the 1990s has been the insatiable demand for
mobility and access to global networks anywhere on the planet. This has led to the extremely rapid
development of analog and digital wireless telecommunications networks (now
nearing 100 million mobile telephones) and now even the deployment of personal
communications mobile satellite systems such as New Iridium, Globalstar, New
ICO, ACeS, Thuraya-M2, etc.
Terrestrial wireless and mobile systems have grown prodigiously on the
basis of demand for mobile and remote access. As this demand becomes more mature and seeks broader band
service this will fuel the demand for new higher frequency and higher
throughput satellite systems with many of these operating in the new Ka, Q and
V frequency bands. There can be no
doubt as these broader band mobile satellite systems come into wider scale use
that their applications for education and health will continue to increase.
Broadband Entertainment Services: The greatest strengths of satellite
systems may well be in point-to-multi-point distribution systems, broadcasting
networks and now in multi-media based multi-casting system. Satellites have been key to the growth
of national cable television systems, and CD quality radio broadcasting. In the 21st century,
multi-casting based applications such as software distribution networks,
electronic libraries and catalog systems and even computer-based interactive
and asymmetric electronic games will create a dizzying array of new
applications.
All of
these applications and many more will support the global growth of the
communications satellite services industry from $25 billion as of 1998 to $75
billion a year by 2005. New 21st
century applications will continue to explode. This growth will, however, likely be dominated by
multi-casting, broadcasting, navigational and mobile services plus Internet and
Intranet based services. These
will include interactive and mobile security systems, intelligent building and
campus operations, integrated mobile communications and navigation services,
intelligent highways, dedicated business and research networks and, of course,
tele-education and tele-health services.
In short,
these innovations in satellite technology and new satellite applications open
the door not only to local, national and international business, news and
entertainment, but also allow cost effective and extensive social services as
well. Thus, broad-band satellite
communications of the 21st century will offer amazing new
opportunities for tele-education, tele-health, and other tele-services by
governments, information networking by non-governmental organizations and aid
agencies, and hundreds of other innovative uses. While there are tens of millions of satellite based
teleservices today, one can anticipate hundreds of millions of students
obtaining satellite tele-education services in another few decades.
Major Drivers of
Change in Global Satellite Technology
Major drivers of change in the overall field of
telecommunications include: (a) competition, (b) deregulation, (c) new
technology, (d) new types of applications and service demands, (e) globalism,
and (f) convergence of technology, services and markets. Not too surprisingly, these same forces
are the key bases of change in the world of satellite communications as
well. For satellites the new
regulatory framework driven by competition and deregulation and new
technologies and services are of particular import.
The end of the era of the so-called "natural monopoly
approach" to telecommunications ended in the mid-1980s. In rapid-fire fashion many of the
largest and most advanced economies in the world moved to privatize
telecommunications entities (where relevant) and create competition in the
provision of networks and services.
In the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan,
and the United States these major shifts occurred first. Now virtually all of Europe of the Organization
of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is subject to telecommunications
competition and overall some 80 countries have signed on to the General
Agreement on Telecommunications Services (GATS) of the World Trade
Organization. Under this GATS
framework, competition, deregulation, and privatization are being implemented
and even this is being accomplished at different speeds and to different
degrees. This has served to open
up new opportunities for satellite services with more direct access by business
users and consumers to space based services.
This global trend is particularly relevant to satellite
communications and wireless systems because these technologies are most adept
at bypassing the established terrestrial cable and wire networks of the
established former monopolies.
Increasingly the new competitive environment forces new competitors to
deploy the most advanced and cost-effective and flexible technology to compete
with established wire, coax or fiber-based networks. It is the narrow-band, copper wire based
"last-mile" part of the older networks that are most vulnerable to
competition by satellite networks.
It is in the "last mile" contest for higher speed access (heightened
by the need for faster connection speeds to Internet) where the newer, broader
band and wireless networks can be effective. It is this market in particular that Ka and Q/V band
satellite systems such as Hughes Spaceway, Loral Cyberstar, and SES Global,
etc., hope to capture. Terrestrial wireless systems including third generation Personal Communications Services (PCS), as well as so-called "wireless cable services," i.e., MMDS and LMDS, are likewise trying to compete with terrestrial cable and wire systems by being able to bypass the local cabling and go directly to the desk-top or the subscriber's hand-held units.
Finally mobile satellite systems such as Globalstar, New Iridium, New
ICO, AceS, Thuraya and other such systems are seeking ways to provide voice and
Internet services directly to users around the world.
This new environment places the regulatory officials in a
new role. Rather than trying to
control tariffs or investment, the challenge today is to encourage competitive
services to the consumer and to penalize anti-competitive behavior through fines
and other controls. The official
regulatory agencies such as the European Union, OfTel of the United Kingdom,
Austel in Australia, the FCC, and particularly the World Trade Organization
(WTO) on a global scale are, in their various ways, working to create a number
of incentives to encourage new competitive market entry. In fact, in Europe the first step to
greater competition in the European market began with the European Union's
Green Paper on Satellite Communications in the 1980s. The French Space Agency (CNES) has even taken the unusual
step of investing in new satellite communications ventures.
In short, the satellite industry that was once under the
control and dominance of the large telecommunications monopolies and greatly
favored wire and cable technologies are now the main beneficiaries of
inter-media competition. Although
fiber optic cables are highly cost efficient and provide huge throughput, they
are limited in their ability to support mobile applications and service to
rural, remote and rugged terrain locations.
At the same time, the various satellite systems are being
used not only for business, news and entertainment, but increasingly for social
services, particularly for distance learning and tele-health applications. New technology and new broadband
applications are leading the way.
One of the key puzzles of the day can be likened to the old
riddle of whether the chicken or egg came first? In the age of modern satellite communications the question
is whether advanced digital communications satellite created the new
competitive market structure or did the new environment allow satellite systems
to blossom. The answer seems to be
that this was a powerful symbiosis that was mutually reinforcing. Despite the rapid development of
satellite communications over the last few decades, the explosion of technology
is far from complete.
Some of the most important technological developments are
still to come. Within a decade or
so there will likely be new very high power (25 to 60 KW) Multi-Purpose Digital
Satellite Buses capable of providing all forms of telecommunications services
at bit rates in the gigabits/second to the terabits/second range. The ancillary to these extremely high
frequency and high power space buses will be terrestrial transceivers that are
highly user or consumer oriented.
This means the advent of so-called hand-held portable or even
"wearable antennas" and broadband micro-terminals that shrink from
about 65 centimeters (2 feet) in diameter down toward the size of a cigarette
pack. Here electronic tracking
user terminals (i.e., phased-array and patch antennas) will be key. This pattern of "Technology
Inversion" (i.e., making space systems larger and more powerful while
ground transceivers shrink in size and power) will also allow cell phones to be
sufficiently low in power so as to ensure human safety.
During the first decade of the 21st century one can also
anticipate that so-called High Altitude Platforms Systems (HAPS) with huge
capacities for mobile telecommunications and television entertainment will be
deployed over large cities. Even
further in the future, it seems likely that high capacity low earth orbit
multi-media satellites will be interconnected to HAPS platforms via satellite
cross-links to create Hybrid Space/HAPS networks. In this case the satellite part of the system will create
low-latency global interconnectivity while the HAPS wireless systems will
create huge localized capacities over dense traffic urban areas. Also in the post 2010 time period, very
high capacity optical space communications systems operating in the
space-to-earth and earth-to-space mode could also provide a new type of space
systems as well.
What is not as clear is whether extremely large geosynchronous
satellite antenna farms, perhaps acres in size, can achieve the same or larger
capacities as fiber optic systems.
In the satellite world the trend seems to be to move to higher and
higher frequencies that can support higher information throughput (i.e., using
the Ka, Q/V and W bands and/or the development of large multi-beam satellite
systems) that are capable of achieving 100 fold frequency re-use
opportunities. This torrent of
technological change suggests that creating effective standards for seamless
interconnection of space and terrestrial systems will not become any
easier. In short while the
technology will bring lower costs and broad band services to an ever growing
market, the regulatory, standards, and frequency allocation problems will probably
become even more difficult than today.
The world
of satellite communications has changed dramatically in only the last decade
and will change even more in the decade ahead. Currently satellite communications services represent about
$35 billion/year today and are expected to reach some $75 billion/year by year-end 2005. It is a very large and growing industry that is increasingly
international in scope and ownership.
The satellite systems being designed, prototyped and
"mass-produced" have higher and higher speed, yet with lower and
lower cost (although launch costs have stubbornly resisted major cost and price
reductions).
New or
revamped satellite entities have entered the field from locales as diverse as
Korea, Israel, Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia and China. New approaches to satellite
communications are everywhere.
These new approaches include high-powered solar arrays, on-board
processing, signaling and re-generation of digital signals. They also include new types of orbits,
mass production of satellites and micro-terminals, use of new Ka and Q/V bands,
phased array antennas, and intensive re-use of frequencies.
These new
technologies and systems concepts have redefined the scope and reach of
satellite communications, allowed them to compete with fiber optic
communications systems in new ways, and most importantly have allowed them to
provide direct services to consumers.
The "satellite bypass revolution" that allowed individual
consumers to buy direct-to-the-home entertainment, mobile communications via
hand-held units, and provided communications and tracking to trucks, buses, and
trains is perhaps the most important change of all. These changes were allowed more by revisions in laws and
regulation than by new technology or systems concepts.
In concept the satellite communications technology of the 21st
century could evolve in many ways.
These include the extrapolation of current satellite technology so that
it simply gets bigger and better.
This, however, seems unlikely because the demands of the marketplace
suggest that new technologies and new efficiencies are needed both in space
systems and particularly in terms of new more cost efficient user terminals.
There are also prospects of new types of orbital systems, but recent
experience in the market place suggest that particularly low earth orbit
systems will be postponed due to technical challenges associated with broadband
switching and uncertain business models, even though traffic on systems such as
Globalstar and New Iridium are currently growing well.
Yet another option would be to develop new types of satellite
architecture and antenna systems that could produce major payoffs in terms of
new cost efficiencies and new and more effective use of spectrum. If one projects current satellite
technology forward in terms of mass, spectrum and performance the likely design
parameters would be expected to be as reflected in Figure 1 below. If it were possible to develop new technology and systems that reflect such a new type of architecture with very large aperture but low mass phased array antenna systems, then new, higher performance "breakthrough" goals for satellites becomes plausible.
At this
time such large scale and high performance new types of satellite systems would have to be deployed in geosynchronous
orbit since one could not achieve the needed scale and broadband switching
efficiencies in either Medium Earth Orbit (Meo) or Low Earth Orbit (Leo) that
would likely be required.
The research plan that is implicit in the types of space systems implied
by Figure 1 would likely have a number of specific objectives:
Figure 1: New Goals For Future Satellite Communications Development
These new and quite demanding new space telecommunications development goals might include the following:
(a)
Development of 10 to 100 times more usable radio frequency spectrum for global satellite telecommunications. This would be derived from a geo-platform that would dramatically reduce the cost of all types of space telecommunications and information services - private and public.
(b) Allow the introduction of new forms of user friendly and highly compact micro-terminals. These would not only be extremely low-cost and low powered but also sufficiently small so that they could be extremely portable or even eventually become wearable devices. (The advent of very low power user transceivers will also have a long-term health advantage as well as an economic advantage. Progress in this regard may have more to do with digital compression and vocoder technology than satellite technology.)
(c) Create system economies that would radically reduce the cost of global telecommunications networks, broadcast and mobile services, and international tele-education, tele-health, tele-safety and disaster warning systems.
In short the new and highly advanced satellite systems, would likely be based on large scale space telecommunications systems, that one might call "geo-platforms", because new scale and performance economies would likely not be achievable in lower orbits.
These new geo-platforms could stimulate new public as well as private-sector applications and provide economic breakthroughs in the cost of access to orbital spectrum. It could also aid in the creation of new jobs and information services. Discussion of possible new applications that these new space systems might make possible are discussed later in this chapter.
Such advanced Geo-Platform designs could, in theory, involve the deployment of less mass and less complex systems in space than today's most advanced space communications antenna systems. More specifically these advanced systems might actually weigh about the same as today's largest satellites (i.e., about 5,000 kilograms), yet they could also achieve performance that is significantly better than today's most advance satellite designs. This assumption is based on the idea that there can indeed be revolutionary design capabilities in an advanced geo-platform that departs from the trend line for conventional satellite design.
In order for such advanced design concepts to be successful they must be more than just competitive with today's communications systems, but rather they must seek to be competitive with telecommunications systems some 15 years hence. Further they must deliver system capacities and quality of service that would be compatible with system user needs that might be anticipated in the 2010 to 2020 so time period.
This is obviously a very difficult objective in light of the continued expansion of system users and exponential growth of broadband user needs as driven by high data rate Internet applications, growing numbers of terabyte databases as being deployed via Internet 2, the exploding use of multi-media applications, and the explosive global growth of e-commerce and worldwide radio and television broadcast systems.
It is therefore assumed that the prime driver of advanced geo-platform design will be the ability to deliver huge amounts of spectrum from orbit (orders of magnitude greater than today's satellites) and at commercially competitive prices. The key goal of this advanced system design study of an advanced geo-platform would be, in a nutshell, to find a cost effective way to greatly multiply access to "useable spectrum".
Demands for satellite services can be envisioned that are 10 to 50 times greater than today's service requirements. This new service demand would be in such areas as broadcasting, multi-casting, aeronautical safety, navigation and mobile communications, mobile applications involving multi-media over IP, and new broadband business, tele-education, tele-health and other social services. Figure 2 below thus summarizes some of the primary technology goals that future satellite systems would need to meet.
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Future Satellite System Goals
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Figure 2: Key Technology Goals for Future
Satellite Systems
Figure 3
Figure 4A
Figure 4B
Figure 5
The purpose
of these diagrams is not to project the actual future of satellite systems some
10 to 20 years from now but to illustrate the wide range of satellite
technologies and systems design that we can project for the future. One can only hope that demand for new
broadband electronic delivery systems for educational and health services can
accelerate the deployment of more cost effective and more flexible satellite
systems in coming years. As we
plan for the future it is inspiring to realize that the potential of satellite systems
are actually still in their infancy.
In this vein we might recall the words of the 19th century
poet Alfred Lloyd Tennyson in Locksley Hall in which he projected that vessels
of commerce would indeed fly in the sky.
His ongoing vision of the future still can guide us today:
"I dipped into the future, far as human eye can see,
I saw a vision of a world and wondrous things yet to be."
Summary and Conclusions
The field
of satellite communications is currently in a new renaissance. This period of exceptional fast growth
and increased cost efficiency is driven by two key forces: (i) new technology
and systems concepts that include new approaches to design and manufacturing
and (ii) new legal and regulatory systems that allow satellites to bypass
traditional telecommunications systems and deliver "mass market
services" directly to the consumer.
U.S. industry, often in partnership with corporations in Europe, Japan
and elsewhere, have proven very adept in exploiting this new satellite
technology and low cost ground systems (i.e., very small aperture terminals
(VSATs), ultra small aperture terminals (USATs) and even hand-held
micro-terminals) to create new businesses and offer new services.
In many
cases new satellite services and applications are now linked to mass
entertainment or Internet linked data and multi-media services. In the future big science and social,
education, and health applications will develop even broader market
demand. The variety of satellite
technologies and architectures projected in this chapter do not seek to predict
the future so much as to confirm the great wealth of alternatives available to
satellite planners as we look for deeply into the twenty first century. These new technologies in turn suggest
that a broad range low cost broad band satellite services can and will be
offered in coming years.
Frequency Allocations, National
Landing Rights and Standards:
Issues and Possible Solutions
The
continued rapid expansion of satellite communications is constrained in a
number of ways that relate to regulatory and trade policies, standards, and
national licensing arrangements.
The new World Trade Organization's administration of the General
Agreement on Telecommunications Services and some of the reforms of the ITU
will undoubtedly help.
Nevertheless, more creative international approaches to create
"model laws and regulations" for national licensing and landing
rights and to create more flexible approaches to frequency allocations are
needed. In many cases it seems
that national study commissions and national governmental study teams are asked
to solve international and interdisciplinary problems. In short, there may need to be more
effective ways to assemble international and interdisciplinary study teams to
solve some of these international problems in areas such as trade policy,
technical and service standards, and effective social and economic application
of satellite technology.
New Applications - Commercial and Public Sector Synergies?
In the past
it has often been thought that one would create commercial satellite systems to
meet business needs, military communications satellites to address defense
related needs and yet other governmental communications satellite systems to
deliver governmental or public services.
This approach of dividing frequency allocations, satellite services, and
systems operations into specific sectors such as direct broadcast television
satellites, mobile satellites, governmental environmental monitoring, defense-related
entertainment services, etc., increasingly seems to be economically and
technically inefficient. A new
approach that allows more effective bundling of satellite services using a
common high-powered digital stream that can offer a variety of services to a
variety of clients (i.e., commercial, governmental, educational, and even
military) may make a good deal of sense.
As always, it is key to recognize that technical efficiency and political efficiency involve different values and standards and the ultimate "right" decisions in these areas remain to be seen. One can hope that broadband commercial satellite systems can
in the future provide low cost and effective options for educational and health
applications.
Megatrends for the World
of Fiber and Satellites
There is no single way of forecasting the future - certainly not accurately and without some error. Nevertheless, the idea
that all broadband services would migrate to fiber optic cable as predicted by
the so-called "Negroponte Flip" is simply not occurring in the market
place. Instead the desire for
mobility and service flexibility has led us toward the so-called "Pelton
Merge" whereby there is a need for a seamless interconnection of fiber
optic, coax, copper wire, terrestrial wireless and satellite systems. There must be agreement in the U.S.,
Japan, Europe and in other parts of the world to support low-cost and effective
global communications and interconnection of all forms of media. This means a new emphasis on developing
"equal and balanced" standards that allow the easy interconnection of
wire, wireless and satellite technologies without difficult interfaces or
complex or wasteful overheads in any of the media.
References
Pelton, Joseph N. (1998). The future of telecommunications, Scientific American,
April.
Author
Biographical Sketch
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Joseph N. Pelton, Ph.D.
4025 40th St. North
Arlington, VA 22207
(703) 536-6985
(703) 726-8378
(202) 994-5507
E-mail: ecjpelton@aol.com
E-mail: jpelton@gwu.edu
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Dr. Pelton is Director of the Space and Advanced Communications Research
Institute (SACRI) at George Washington University. He also serves as Director of the Accelerated M.S. Program
in Telecommunications and Computers at the George Washington University
Virginia Campus. He is also the
founder and Executive Director of the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for
Telecommunications and Information (CITI), which works in partnership with
telecommunications research institutes and foundations in Europe, North America
and Asia.
Dr. Pelton is the author of 18 books and over 300 articles in the field
that include writings on satellites and wireless telecommunications systems, on
advanced telecommunications technology and regulation and on the long range
impact of technology on society.
These include the multi-book series: Future Talk, Future View, and Global
Talk, the latter of which he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His latest book E-Sphere: The Rise
of the World-Wide Mind completes the series. He has served as Chairman of the Board
(1992-95) and Vice President of Academic Programs and Dean (1996-97) of the
International Space University of Strasbourg, France. This experimental international academic institution
specializes in graduate interdisciplinary studies and hosts study programs at
leading universities around the world in addition to its Masters program
conducted at its main campus in France.
Dr. Pelton is the former Director of Strategic Policy at the Intelsat
global satellite system and he also served as Director of Project SHARE,
Satellites for Health and Rural Education for Intelsat as well as the follow on
Project Access program. Under this
program the Chinese National Television University began and many dozens of
other tele-education and tele-health projects were conducted in over 100
different countries. Dr. Pelton is the founding president of the Society of Satellite Professional International (SSPI), a member of the SSPI Hall of Fame, a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, a full member of the International Academy of Astronautics, a member of the AIAA, a winner of the International Communications Association "Innovator in Education Award", a winner of the H. Rex Lee award for international service by the Public Service Satellite Association and on the editorial boards of Space Policy, the International Journal of Space Communications and Acta Astronautica. He is also in Who's Who in Education, Who's Who International, the American Biographical Institute and other similar publications.
Dr. Pelton has long worked with Tak Utsumi, Tapio Varis and others on
tele-education projects including initiatives with GLOSAS, the Global
University System, etc.
