Covering All The Bases
With 20 percent of its total revenue derived from video, Intelsat is focusing on comprehensive occasional use services, among other things, and is adding end-to-end bookings as part of its video offerings via its GlobalConnex hybrid infrastructure. Intelsat's Occasional Video Solutions (OVS) is an important part of this transformation of Intelsat into a full service provider.
"In the past, we only offered space segment and we did not handle end-to-end bookings. In doing so, customers relied heavily on third party resellers to book Intelsat capacity as well as the end-to-end components," says Harry Mahon, vice president of sales for Worldwide Video Services at Intelsat. "With our new capabilities of teleports and fiber infrastructure combined with the Video Operations Center, we can manage end-to-end bookings with our own facilities as well as third party facilities."
OVS involves 10-minute minimum commitments with no ceiling in terms of restrictions on maximum duration on standard configurations of 8.4 Mbs and 15 Mbs using 3/4 Forward Error Correction. All of the requisite conversion, encoding, decoding, conditional access and switching processes are bundled into the OVS offering as well.
The Asian region is experiencing an increased demand for broadcasting services, and Intelsat is looking at a range of new TV distribution opportunities. With Japan emerging as a second major HDTV market, for example, Intelsat is paying special attention to its relationship with NHK, among others.
"We are working with NHK. They are using Intelsat 902 for contribution services from Europe back to Japan. We see their use of our capacity growing," says Mahon.
Panamsat is preparing to add new satellites to its fleet, including three new C-band satellites and a C-/Ku-band hybrid. "Our new satellites offer increases in power in the 3 dB to 4 dB range, which means the power is more than doubled. This will allow broadcasters to take advantage of compression and boost their efforts to provide new applications such as HDTV and VOD, along with store and forward content," says Jim Frownfelter, COO at Panamsat.
On the ground, a transition to virtual teleports will enable Panamsat to connect and consolidate its six existing U.S. teleports. Level 3 is providing a Multi Protocol Label Switching or MPLS-based terrestrial network, with Epic and Broadwing providing redundant paths.
When this process is completed, the mix of four teleports featuring interconnected hubs with Sonet rings at each location and access to multiple Points of Presence (POPs) worldwide will give customers simplicity of transport. To upgrade, customers only have to access the nearest POP, eliminating the need to use a satellite to gain access to this new hybrid network.
"What we have created is a state of the art, MPLS-based network geared for data transport," says Frownfelter. "Our emphasis is on reliability. Our customers will not have to rely on the old architecture any longer.
"In nine months of testing, we passed billions of bits over this MPLS-based network, and we never lost a packet. As we marry MPLS and satellite distribution, we see lots of opportunities," he adds. "For video customers, we are eliminating data corruption issues, including the bit errors and the lost packets which have long been associated with conventional ATM networks."
Panamsat is also consolidating its entire compressed digital video services group into Atlanta as the market heats up for HDTV and store and forward services. It is partnering with video and VOD server vendor, SeaChange International, to expand its ground footprint at headends.
"With store and forward, the initial focus has been United States to international and international to United States for customers like Discovery, which has found our network to be the ideal way to transfer files to Singapore," says Frownfelter. "Seamless VOD and HDTV represent growth drivers for us as well. HDTV in particular is going to use a lot of bandwidth."
SES Americom is also taking the necessary steps to address changes in traffic as real-time, direct to air TV transmissions make way for a move to the edge or the store and forward approach according to Carl Capista, SES Americom's vice president of satellite services in North America.
"We are providing more ground segment services. As more of our customers embrace store and forward delivery over their enterprise distribution networks, we are offering to design and build, or design, build and operate portions of these networks," says Capista. "As this unfolds, how much network does the broadcaster need to own? While each of the broadcasters [is at a different level of digitization], all of them are seeking to reduce broadcast operations overhead."
For broadcasters, things like multiple live to air time zone feeds are no longer necessary. They must adapt to other changes as well, including the distribution of more HDTV content, the growing role for centralcasting operations, and the rolling-out of more compressed platforms by major media companies. All of these developments are being addressed by satellite service providers.
"More customization at the affiliate level by doing things like dividing time zones into sections is seen as desirable. The trick is to tie the mix of real-time and store and forward programming together with the scheduling system," says Capista.
For UHF and VHF broadcasters who are confronting troublesome terrain issues and who want improved links with their repeaters well within their legitimate DMA, or perhaps to upgrade their B contour cable system feeds, SES Americom is offering a satellite-based alternative.
The Audience Holds The Key
If consumers start to embrace HDTV at a much quicker pace, all bets are off. Broadcasters will scramble to adapt their HDTV transmission plan to whatever the market deems necessary.
Neither the TiVo or PVR revolution, nor the datacasting side of DTV is likely to generate any significant upside for the satellite sector, although both could have a dramatic impact on the TV viewing habits of younger viewers in particular.
Regardless, for the satellite industry, the priorities remain the same. Keep things simple for broadcasters, and keep stressing reliability above all else.
While tremendous changes may lie ahead, the point-to-multipoint distribution arrows remain pointed at the sky. Broadcasters like satellites, while the satellite industry knows that taking such affection for granted can be very risky indeed.
Peter J. Brown is Via Satellite's Senior Multimedia & Homeland Security Editor. He lives on Mount Desert Island, ME.
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