Since bandwidth is a finite resource, making the most of it and using it efficiently is undeniably critical to the telecommunications industry. However, user needs are changing, and bandwidth usage is becoming more multifaceted.
“The satellite industry has a long and fruitful record of innovations in bandwidth management,” says Carlos Placido, senior analyst at NSR. “I expect the industry to fully embrace the potential of virtualization and new techniques that function at the core network or ‘cloud’ level. From software-defined networks to software-defined satellites, there will be an increasing relevance of smart software.”
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Itzik Wulkan, co-founder and chief executive officer at Israel-based NovelSat, agrees with Placido. “Demand is growing — this is clear in many markets,” he says. “Just look at cellular backhaul. Bandwidth increases by about 80 percent annually, and this reflects the need for satellite bandwidth.”
Drivers for greater bandwidth include increasingly connected devices, the Internet of Things (IoT), all-digital news content, and Internet-based video demands. Furthermore, anywhere/everywhere connectivity expectations require new types of delivery models.
“At the site level, which is obviously created by ever increasing demands for bandwidth at the user level, I don’t know anybody now who carries only one IP enabled device with them,” says Andrew Lucas chief technology officer at Harris CapRock Communications. “It used to be that you carried a phone and did some text messaging. Now I’m pretty sure that you have your laptop, your iPad, maybe one or two phones and a couple of other devices — kindles, watches, who knows — all [of which] are IP-enabled, all of which connect to the network, and all of which are creating and consuming bandwidth.”
GCI
A different perspective emerges for end-users that are mostly rural in nature, such as GCI, the largest provider of telecommunication services in Alaska. The types of anchor services it delivers to schools and clinics are frequently for safety purposes, and often form the primary wireless presence in remote villages.
“In the past two years,” says Mark Ayers, director of radio frequency engineering and network services for GCI, “the healthcare and schools access domain … those particular markets are very big growth areas for GCI in our satellite segment. We also see growth in the Internet consumption areas, which is pretty consistent with what you see in an urban market — maybe not at the same rate, but it is just continuously growing.”
GCI is “hyper focused on efficient use of the space segment,” Ayers says, because of the cost of satellite capacity. “In terms of software, we have management tools within our network and planning tools that allows us to efficiently utilize our space segment so that we know where our carriers are, we know where our gaps are, and we can efficiently find carriers … that are of sufficient size.”
Efficiency
NovelSat is focused on spectral efficiency and has developed an “echo cancellation” technique that enables uplink and downlink on the same bandwidth, doubling transmission capacity over existing bandwidth. Called DUET CEC (Carrier-Echo-Cancellation), the technology is not a hardware, but rather software-defined radio that can be upgraded over-the-air as a remotely downloadable software module.
Flexibility
With companies around the world wanting higher bandwidth data services, especially for streaming/video services, flexible delivery of video content becomes increasingly relevant in mobile networks. Sevis Systems, a backhaul optimization technology company, plans to deal with the challenge of pre-compressed streaming video by using optimizers with high processing power and storage capabilities to catch mobile computing functions at the “edge” of the hierarchical network to facilitate mobile content delivery.
Effect of HTS and Small Satellites
The advent of HTS and proliferation of smaller satellites in LEO and MEO has had a reverberating effect felt in every corner of the telecommunications market. Wulkan believes that in the 2020s the majority of traffic will be over LEO satellites, not over GEO.
“Some may think that satcom’s transition to HTS, with larger supply figures and lower bandwidth costs could undermine the importance of bandwidth management,” said Placido. “I frankly think that it will be just the opposite. Bandwidth management is and will remain important, and possibly even more in the context of GEO-HTS and LEO-HTS.”
“You can see [market predictions] for companies looking to actually eliminate cellular networks and use satellite hotspots with handset communicating directly with the LEO satellites … even if you discount some of the [predictions], we are the verge of a huge revolution.” VS
