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to offer broadband
Various innovations to provide two-way service
By David Everitt
TV commercials for places like The Wiz make it seem like everyone’s going broadband, that you’ve got to be some kind of pitiful, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal if you aren’t already wired to faster-than-a-speeding-bullet web access.
Of course, what’s really going on is that a lot of not-so-dumb people just aren’t sure they want to spend the extra money every month.
And they also are a little confused about which way to go, DSL or cable modem.
And now, just to make things a little more confusing, you can choose to get broadband beamed down to you from a satellite.
For a couple of years, the DBS industry has been looking for a way to solve its return-path problem. Satellite systems have relied on phone lines for sending data from the consumer back to the internet provider, a path that’s a lot slower than the satellite-driven information coming in to the home.
The DBS industry needed to find a solution to this problem in order to keep competing with digital cable, which already has a high-speed, two-way service.
One solution went up into space recently when StarBand launched a new satellite. Consumers can get StarBand’s high-speed service via a dish that also receives EchoStar’s satellite TV channels.
Other, supposedly faster interactive services should come along within the next year or two, when Wild Blue Communications and Hughes’ Spaceway launch new satellites of their own.
“Satellite providers are looking everywhere for a way to supply interactive services to compete with digital cable,” says Darren von Behren, digital media analyst at Hoak Breedlove. “The question is: what is the actual capacity of the satellites in the air today?”
StarBand, which has 25,000 subscribers, is comparable to another recent introduction, the DirecPC service from DirecTV, with 50,000 subscribers. Currently StarBand is a little more expensive but also a little faster.
To add yet another consideration that could give consumers a headache when weighing all their options, StarBand and DirecPC use the Ku band of frequency. The next wave of satellite interactive service will use the Ka band, which should be faster and more economical. Which just makes you wonder: how seriously we should take the current generation of satellite data transmission?
“StarBand and DirecPC are the products for the moment,” according to Mike Goodman, senior analyst for The Yankee Group. He points out that, currently, satellite broadband is still slower and more expensive than cable modem service, adding, “Satellite broadband is strongest where cable modem is weakest, such as the rural areas of the country.”
Wild Blue will be the first of the faster Ka-band services, available probably next year. The next Ka system, Spaceway, should come along in 2003, while several other providers are also planning to enter the field - and make the job of choosing even more complicated.
Will Ka-band be the answer that the DBS providers are looking for? Will it put satellite broadband and interactive service on an equal footing with digital cable?
The answer is most definitely yes, perhaps.
“Ka-band service will be faster,” says Goodman, “running at 3 megabits per second - they say - compared to 1.5 megabits per second for cable modem. It should also be priced at the cable-modem level. But one thing to keep in mind, it’s more susceptible to ‘rain fade’ than Ku band.”
Rain fade occurs during damp weather and can impede service. Goodman explains that this happens with Ka frequency because its higher-powered signal is more likely to be absorbed by water.
“There are ways around this,” he adds, “but they could impact service. They could increase the power of the service to avoid rain fade but that in turn could slow down the system. In other words, increasing the power at one end could draw off power at the other.”
Still, whatever the problems, satellite broadband could be well suited to certain sectors of the market. In addition to rural areas - the usual DBS province - businesses could also be prime customers. Since there hasn’t been any need for TV to be wired into business locations, cable has bypassed these buildings. Satellite broadband could move in simply by offering a dish.
As for homes, von Behren stresses that it’s important for the satellite industry to keep tinkering and come up with an economical alternative to digital cable.
“It’s especially important for DBS to find a way to compete with cable video-on-demand. They need to find a way to supply a separate data stream to each subscriber.”
So, to put it all in a nutshell: Ku band provides fast two-way interactive service, but not as fast as Ka band, which may be quicker even than cable modems, but could also fritz out when it rains, while at the same time could still be a good choice for rural areas, businesses and eventually, possibly video-on-demand.
If all this just wears you out and makes you want to stick with what you have, you’re probably not alone.
April 5, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-David Everitt writes about television from Huntington, New York.
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