Virtualization is taking the IT world by storm. The concept revolves around the creation of virtual devices in place of tangible technology products, such as computers, routers or software programs. The goal is to create the same utility with a smaller number of physical assets, while simultaneously increasing performance and driving down costs. Virtualization is alive and well in the VSAT industry with a variety of different offerings from different vendors.
For many years, market customers had only two ways to acquire VSAT services: purchasing a private hub or buying VSAT services à la carte from service providers. While private hubs provided customers with total control of their satellite network, the capability came at a very high cost – often exceeding $1 million for hardware alone. A specialized staff was required for proper care and feeding, which added to the total cost of ownership. The message was clear: organizations with extremely deep pockets need only apply for membership into the private hub fraternity.
Shared hub services, on the other hand, were far less expensive and could be purchased discretely. If you needed 57 VSATs, that’s all you would have to pay for. There was need to worry about buying a big chunk of bandwidth from a satellite operator if you only need a sliver. While shared hub VSAT services certainly lowered the cost of entry, they offered limited, if any, control of the hub to the end-user or reseller. Virtual hub services are a good compromise that exist somewhere between a private and shared hub, providing end-users and resellers more control but at a much lower cost than purchasing and operating a private hub.
Major Subsystems
VSAT hubs consist of several major subsystems: baseband equipment, which deals with data protocols and traffic management; and a radio frequency transmitter (RFT), which transmits and receives signals from the satellite. Hubs also have a network management system, however, we will assume for this article that they will be part of the baseband equipment. The RFT package includes a large antenna, amplifiers and other RF components.
The baseband and RFT subsystems require completely different skill sets to manage. Private hub operators not only need IP and routing experts to control baseband equipment, they also require RF specialists to maintain amplifiers and deal with satellite operators. This “second staff” is highly specialized and generally dedicated to RF matters at a large expense, but one that is affordable if amortized across thousands of VSATs.
Virtual hub offerings are not the same from vendor to vendor, as their features and functions alter significantly. The common denominator is that the RFT, and its management, is outsourced separately from the baseband equipment.
You will achieve better economy if you own your own infrastructure, assuming you have a large enough network to justify it.
—Dave Rehbehn, Hughes
Hughes offers clients and resellers a range of virtual hub services. “Depending on the amount of control our customers desire to have, we can offer several different solutions. Some clients, like Row 44 that supplies Internet support to Southwest Airlines’ aircraft, want complete control. GTECH, which operates the lottery systems in many states, is another good example. These companies own their baseband infrastructure and Hughes operates it at the customer’s direction,” says Dave Rehbehn, senior marketing director, Hughes.
Hughes offers a solution that it calls a private IP network. “Our customers have dedicated elements of the baseband equipment — this includes a dedicated IP gateway, which is where services plans are defined in the hub. There are many advantages to this approach. The enterprise customer or reseller can define their own service level agreements (SLA) and Quality of Service (QoS). Hughes then operates the service for the customer,” says Rehbehn. “You will achieve better economy if you own your own infrastructure, assuming you have a large enough network to justify it. Scale and cost are the two largest negatives of private network. Virtual hubs have tremendous advantages; they scale very well because personnel costs are bundled in the service offering. Of course, one of the biggest values is that you don’t have to invest in an RFT and then manage it. In essence, you are sharing someone else’s teleport.”
Spacenet provides virtual hub solutions, which it calls an enterprise partition, primarily to end-users who are technically capable of providing satellite services themselves. Alasdair Calder, director of product management, Spacenet, says, “We provide enterprise partitions to a number of sophisticated customers, which provide satellite services to the energy industry. They own their own hub equipment and space segment but look to Spacenet to operate it for them. Each of our clients has a unique set of requirements and we work with them to determine the level of support they need. For instance, one client may want to provide Tier 1 support directly for their client and then look to Spacenet for Tier 2 and 3 support and another client may only want Tier 3 support.”
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