Buckley: Globecomm is a great partner for us. Their FAST announcement was a big step for their disaster recovery efforts. We’re providing the antenna products and components they need to be able to establish links in a very timely manner for their recovery base product offerings. All in all, they provide a tremendous added value service by incorporating and integrating all of these various components and systems.

 

 

Buckley: IPStar obviously had a long build-out. They are now a part of Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) as an interim solution. We installed a full-integrated product for them and provided and built all of the large-aperture gateways for that network. While their work with NBN mostly relates to a capacity deal, they’re using our platform and that whole network uses our gateways. At this point, they’ve ordered and installed all of the gateways from the first network plan. They are now in the expansion mode of upgrading gateways to handle more traffic. Every Ka-band and broadband network out there is trying to make sure they have the throughput that keeps their customers happy and you can expect IPStar to do the same. There’s continual expansion going on there as they rely on our 8.1-meter Ka-band gateways and electronics.

 

 

Buckley: Everyone wants to build-out their own network differently. The solutions we provided for Hughes, DirecTV and WildBlue are much different than what we did for IPstar. First off, from a network architecture, electronics and RF standpoint, what may be considered in different regions are things like weather. You’re planning around certain frequency bands in areas that are more prone to rain. We have to build-out the network, equipment and terminals all with that in mind. When you’re dealing with extreme cold and heat, you have to build the system with that also in mind. We build our solutions out using our own products, so we have a wide variety of system configurations that we can employ that allow for modifications in those areas. For IPStar, since the NBN is for Australia, which is such a large country, you’re going to have a wide variety of environmental issues to deal with as well as a variety of RF issues in relation to where the satellite are and where the gateways need to be.

 

 

Buckley: Technology moves in two directions, and its great for a business like ours and for the satellite industry in general. If you take a look at our multi-band, fixed-Earth stations, for example, the original development that went on with the ASC products in that area were geared towards teleport operators who would want to install a single antenna. But as their underlying customer service requirements changed, the possibility arose where they could be able to use that antenna to access other frequency bands for transmitting or receiving. Our antennas have a combination of both multi-band on the same feed, or interchangeable feeds to switch bands. That was, initially, a commercial development. In the case of fixed terminals, a lot of that multi-band feed technology was then ported to the military solutions. For military systems, the less there is to deploy into the theater of operations, the better you are. The more versatile your terminals are, the easier it is to manage operations from a logistics standpoint. This was a very easy porting of our technology for much of our transportable technology — our comms-on-the-pause technology, which we then have geared heavily towards military applications.

 

Buckley: The initial design of our NGC was to allow for easy upgrading for existing users and, as market needs change, allow us to make modifications all within the same upgradeable platform. We have all types of different options that are customizable for the individual purchaser of the NGC that allows them to take advantage of whichever features they might need and pay for only the ones they need and not for the ones they don’t need. So we’re continuing to expand on that list of options that we have. We have added on 10-megahertz reference within the NGC. We’ve also added LNA redundancy switching as an option, as well as the enhanced spectrum analyzer that’s built-in. We also added our carrier monitoring system (CMS), which was a huge addition to that system.

   If a teleport or a customer needs a high-end teleport monitoring system, they could end up spending $200,000. But there are a lot of applications out there where a $50,000 CMS is not a requirement. If you don’t want to pay that kind money, the CMS is available and built into the NGC so you don’t have the overkill of a big system. These NGCs are being deployed on our transportable products and our fixed Earth stations in several different verticals.