Europe
Not surprisingly, most of the satellite applications that are booming in North America are succeeding in Europe as well. These include DBS, satellite broadband, business data and voice, digital signage and distance learning. In addition, satellite telephony is poised to make a big splash in Russia, with the recent launch of Thuraya's mobile telephone service in this terrestrially underserved nation. Thuraya provides satellite telephony in Europe, the Near and Middle East, North and Central Africa, Russia and India. It is poised to expand its coverage into much of Asia and Indonesia.
But the developments do not stop there. Europe is breaking ground in other satellite applications. For example, David Bowie launched his new album "Reality" last September via satellite. To garner attention for his new release, Bowie performed live in London's Riverside Studios and then broadcast the concert via satellite to 86 movie theaters in 26 European countries. Fifty thousand fans reportedly saw the concert in Amsterdam, London, Paris, Berlin and Stockholm, among other cities. They also took part in a live question- and-answer session with Bowie, also via satellite.
To deliver a big-screen experience in real time, Kingston inmedia used two SNG trucks at Riverside. The trucks took Bowie's live feed and encoded it using Tandberg Television's E5710 MPEG-2 equipment. Kingston then uplinked the MPEG-2 stream to Eutelsat's W2's satellite. At the receiving end, the theaters downlinked the feed using Tandberg Integrated Receiver decoders. These units fed the data stream to Digital Theater Systems' (DTS) XD10 Digital Cinema Media Players, which reproduced the audio in 5.1 DTS Digital Surround Sound.
Mainstream Data has signed on with the European Pressphoto Agency (epa) to deliver epa's news photos worldwide via satellite. epa already serves nearly 1,000 newspaper clients from Iberia to Siberia. Thanks to Mainstream Data, epa's photos are now available to newspapers around the world.
In Russia, the Jackpot gaming company has hired the Russian Satellite Communications Co. (RSCC) to install a Gilat Skystar 360E hub and about 500 ground stations. The RSCC network will link Jackpot online players, who compete across Russia to win Jackpot prizes. "Until now, RSCC has maintained about 2,000 VSAT terminals in Russia of which about half were used by the Central Bank of Russia," said Alexander Duka, RSCC's general manager. The contract with Jackpot is the second major VSAT project of this scale in the country."
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