[Satellite News 06-19-09] Hughes Network Systems' recently announced next-generation, high throughput satellite, set to launch in the first quarter of 2012, is just another step in the company's 24-year service industry history of evolving technologies to meet customer demand, according to Hughes CEO Pradman Kaul.

In an interview with Satellite News, Kaul expressed confidence in his company's efforts to expand its broadband Internet service across North America with a satellite designed to deliver over 100 Gbps throughput by employing a multi-spot beam, bent-pipe Ka-band architecture to augment Hughes' already existing Spaceway 3 satellite system - an asset that Kaul said will provide an economic edge over competitors. 

Kaul: The satellite was approximately $250 million and the total program including launch and insurance will be around $400 million. This project is fully funded. At the end of the first quarter earnings call, we told people that we had the cash on hand to build this next-generation satellite and that remains the case. We do not need any additional funding for it.

Kaul: That's a very good question. We are fortunate that we are in the business today and that we have about 470,000 subscribers as we speak. So we have an existing infrastructure and existing organization all over the country to make the new satellite an extension of the currently existing platform. So for example, in terms of gateways, I think the initial seven or eight gateways that we need for this project will be at the same physical sites as the ones we use for the Spaceway network. It will be sharing facilities, the network operating centers, access to the Net, power and the organizations. For those who are new in this business, an organization of hundreds and hundreds of installers, operations, maintenance techs and customer call centers is the largest element to build. We are very fortunate to have all of that in place at a very high level and to have this organization constantly growing. 

Kaul: There were two reasons we chose to go with bent-pipe in this case. The first is that the primary application for this satellite is Internet access for consumers and small- and medium-sized enterprises. For that particular market, bent-pipe architecture makes more sense because they don't need the on-board processor and mesh connectivity for this type of networking application. Having said that, the flexibility of on-board processing may seem desirable, but the economics of that architecture do not make sense. If you were going to build three or four satellites at the same time, you could hope to take the non-recurring engineering costs and amortize them over three satellites. In this case, where we're only building one satellite, bent-pipe is the best economic solution. After all, there is not one type of architecture for everything.

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