SINCE THERE IS ONLY ONE fibre link to the North, the majority of the smaller communities have long had to rely on satellite technology. While it does provide that connection to backbone infrastructure in the south, there remain capacity constraints which challenge service providers’ ability to offer faster speeds and more monthly capacity.
Northwestel’s new satellite backhaul network will connect to Telesat’s Telstar 19 Ka-band bird, which is scheduled to launch sometime in the second quarter of 2018. It will provide much needed bandwidth and improved services but Jeff Philipp, president and CEO at SSi Micro Ltd., said it will still be inadequate because the satellite’s orbital location (it’s over the Atlantic Ocean) won’t allow for full coverage of the westernmost communities.
“It’s beaming east to west with four different beams, which means that you don’t get the kind of capacity as if it was beaming down. And in five communities you won’t get it at all. So even Northwestel’s claim of having all 25 communities done in the next two years is foolish because they should know that five of them will never be workable,” he said.
Compare this to the current C-band services, which, while not able to offer the higher broadband speeds, still cover all of North America and offer a single hop solution. This is important, added Philipp, particularly for telehealth or even voice because the more hops a satellite link has to make increases the latency, thus decreasing the quality of service.
“That means we’re going to need something else. And it’s going to be C-band until something comes along,” he argued.
That something else could come in the form of a constellation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. Telesat is one of a few global satellite companies in a race to launch the first LEO birds. The company has previously indicated that it would launch two prototypes before the end of the year, but suffered a setback this week when its payload was lost during launch due to a rocket malfunction. Another LEO bird is scheduled for launch by Telesat soon, however.
This constellation of satellites – there could be upwards of 100 of them – will offer “multiple terabits of total throughput,” according to Telesat’s VP of LEO Erwin Hudson in an interview with SpaceNews earlier this year. (A transcript of the interview was posted on Telesat’s website on October 20.)
“Telesat LEO will deliver a broadband experience comparable to what users receive on high-performing fiber networks in their home or office. Not only will this be the most capable satellite constellation, but the cost per Mbps will be dramatically lower than current pricing,” he said.
Hudson noted that the performance of the LEO satellites will also be significantly better, 0.03 to 0.05 seconds of round trip latency, or more than 10 times better than current technology.
“With faster and faster broadband speeds required to deliver today’s media-rich Internet, and with a larger and larger fraction of encrypted traffic, low latency is becoming even more important to maximizing speed and delivering a superior web-based experience for end users. And with more and more services moving to the cloud, and the increase in latency-sensitive applications, providing low-latency, high-throughput broadband is critical,” he added.
As has been previously noted, Kepler Communications, a firm affiliated with Iristel, is also working on a nanosatellite option that could help improve the broadband situation in Canada’s Far North. CEO Samer Bishay noted that its football sized satellites could blanket the entire North for $60 million.
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