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The Next GenerationFortunately, the LEO system failures of the late 1990s did not put a damper on investment in other parts of the satellite industry. Satellite digital-audio radio service proved once again the potential for providing highly competitive satellite services to the mass market. In 1997, CD Radio, now Sirius Satellite Radio, and American Mobile Radio, now XM Satellite Radio, each paid more than $80 million for a license to provide satellite radio service in the United States. Satellite radio made its debut in 2001, and now both companies have impressive track records of subscriber growth. Some analysts now predict 44 million satellite radio subscribers in the United States by 2010.
The FSS industry has not stood idly by, either. The VSAT business, which started as a means of connecting far-flung business locations, evolved into a modestly successful way to provide satellite broadband to consumer and mobile users. In 1996, Hughes launched its Direcway broadband VSAT service, and Gilat’s Starband followed in 2000. Both of these services used the Ku-band capacity available on existing FSS spacecraft, but the Ku-band did not provide the bandwidth or support the small antennas needed to provide satellite-delivered broadband to mobile users.
NASA’s Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS) program may not get enough credit for its role in preserving the broadband capabilities of the Ka-band for satellite communications. The ACTS satellite was launched in 1993 as a taxpayer-funded way to explore the development of high-risk satellite communications technology. At that time, the FCC was poised to reallocate most of the Ka-band for terrestrial services. Fortunately, the FCC decided to retain access to a full 1500 megahertz of Ka-band spectrum for satellite broadband and has licensed a number of companies to bring the promise of Ka-band to the American public.
The first generation of Ka-band satellite systems were both ahead of their time, and ultimately victims of the dotcom bust. Systems such as Teledesic, which envisioned a constellation of hundreds of satellites, did not develop beyond the early stages, and the first two Spaceway satellites were redeployed in 2005 to allow DirecTV to provide high-definition DBS. Also in 2005, demonstrating the success of the FCC’s Disco 2 policy in increasing consumer choices, Wildblue became the first entity to offer Ka-band broadband service to U.S. consumers using capacity leased on Telesat Canada’s Anik-F2 satellite. The full promise of the Ka-band remains to be realized, with Wildblue and Hughes expecting to launch dedicated Ka-band broadband satellites soon, and other companies in the wings.
Today, commercial satellites continue to serve critical roles for both corporate and government users. They also are used more than ever to deliver service to the mass market — providing video programming and broadband to the home, digital radio programming to the home and car, and an array of new mobile voice and data services. The relevance to the public of remote sensing satellites such as those of Geoeye and Digitalglobe has increased tremendously along with the explosive popularity of Web sites like Google Earth and Mapquest that use satellite images. In addition, the ability of the satellite industry to rise to the occasion and provide reliable communications in the face of disasters like Hurricane Katrina has dramatically demonstrated the vital role of commercial satellites in the modern world.
Thus, as we celebrate the 20th anniversary of Via Satellite’s first issue, we commend the satellite industry for producing the innovation, and regulators for providing the legal framework, that together have allowed satellites to recapture the public imagination.
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