Satellite broadband initiatives are plentiful in Asia, with companies such as Thaicom, Optus and BB Sat looking to use the latest satellite technology to reduce the digital divide in countries throughout the region.
Asia and Pacific — Broadband and Growing
With 39 percent of the world’s broadband subscribers located in the Asia-Pacific region according to the International Telecommunication Union, some interesting satellite broadband strategies are taking shape to bring broadband to rural areas and provide needed communications services. Operators are seeking a share of a market valued at more than $28 billion and growing, and with 27 million fiber-to-the-home subscribers, it is a wired market with many observers seeing huge growth prospects with 3G and WiMax technologies rapidly building out.
While the highest penetration of broadband households in the world exists in Asia’s top broadband countries such as Korea, in the have-nots such as India and Indonesia, penetration is less than 2 percent, and in underserved markets like Cambodia and Laos, maximum consumer speeds are less than minimum speeds in well-served countries. In most of the Asia-Pacific region, broadband access is limited to urban areas, leaving a huge digital divide between urban and rural access. Satellite probably accounts for less than 1 percent of Asia’s broadband market, but for rural areas without advanced communications infrastructure, mountainous regions, remote islands, and other locations not yet served by ground-based communication lines, satellite communications is helping to reduce the digital divide.
"The strengths of satellite communications for the delivery of broadband services to rural and remote areas over other technologies are significant, including ADSL2+ comparable speeds in future," says Paul Sheridan, director of satellite at Optus, which owns and operates four satellites with a fifth scheduled for launch in 2009. "We believe that due to the low population densities and the significant distances involved, satellite is an economical way to deliver broadband services to these areas."
While broadband services on satellite have been available for several years in the region, they mainly use Ku-band conventional bent-pipe satellite capacity and mainly have been a niche revenue stream to the satellite operator – with one exception. IPStar (also called Thaicom 4) launched in 2005, pioneered in Asia as the first satellite in the region designed specifically for high speed, two-way broadband communication over an IP platform. IPStar-1’s Ku-band and Ka-band beams cover 14 countries throughout the Asia-Pacific Rim, and services and terminals are sold through Thiacom’s network of Partners in ten Asia-Pacific countries and provided through 13 gateway systems. As of July, the company said it had delivered 150,000 user terminals.
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