Satellite giant launches two-way services - Societe Europeenne des Satellites readies Ka-band transport service - Company Business and Marketing

SES is expanding its multimedia services with a new two-way satellite link to be launched next year. The company will initially position the new services in the business-to-business market in Europe, but later plans high-speed Internet access and data delivery services in other regions.

Satellite giant Societe Europeenne des Satellites (SES) is readying the world's first commercial Ka-band transport, providing a two-way satellite link to boost the multimedia services of corporates and service providers.

The Astra-Net service is scheduled to be available in first quarter 2000, and will follow testing this autumn of two-way interactive services on board a new satellite launched in June.

Betzdorf, Luxembourg-based SES plans to establish a foothold in the business data networking and multimedia market, initially in Europe, with the service, but later intends to expand into Internet access and data delivery services as well as into other regions.

"We first want to position these interactive services in the business-to-business market because of the price of the terminal, which is too expensive for the mass market now," said chief executive, Romain Bausch. "With the [two-way] return system we want to...get a good feeling of what are the best suited services to be offered via satellite... before full-fledged, next-generation satellites" with higher capacity Ka-band payloads are introduced for Internet data services. The first terminals for two-way service will be priced at [epsilon]2,000 ($2,125).

One-way service

SES Multimedia SA, which owns the Astra-Net venture, started offering multicast streaming and data delivery, and high-speed Internet services, early in 1998 over a one-way network that uses Ku-band capacity to download data and a phone line for the uplink.

But this one-way service has been slower to take off than the company anticipated.

"The volumes are there to be had, but the challenge of selling into that market is not to be underestimated," said Simon Bull, principal consultant at communications Systems Ltd., St. Albans, England. "Success is almost certainly linked to content."

Bull said the new SES service is best suited to genuine two-way applications, such as downloading data to a network of kiosks across Europe that sell music CDs to end users.

According to Bausch more than 30 service providers, including Deutsche Telekom and Elsacom Spa, Rome, currently use the Astra-Net platform for one-way service at speeds of up to 8 megabits per second. The applications include high-speed Internet data transfer, with a terrestrial line used to request data and the satellite used to deliver it.

Bausch predicts about 100,000 private network sites in Europe will use the two-way service in the first year, including several large customers that each have around 10,000 sites. According to SES the first users likely will be in industries such as banking or automotive as well as lottery shops.

A suitable application requiring a higher speed return path than is currently provided by telephone lines, for example, would be real-time transport of video for multimedia production. Bruno Alberti, president of French multimedia provider CanalMusic, Paris, said the company ma use the two-way satellite system for services such as handling video production and delivery-for example, where a video made in Germany needs to have post-production work carried out in Luxembourg, and then to be sent to a client in another country. "It's perhaps a good d solution for tomorrow," he said.

Big telecoms operators, Internet service providers d other specialist service providers also are target customers. They can either lease bulk satellite capacity for their own networks, or can contract with SES for Astra-Net end-to-end networking services.

Return path

Two-way communications over Astra-Net satellite capacity, using a capability known as the Astra Return Channel System (ARCS), will provide a Ku-band link at speeds up to 38 Mbps for data delivery to the customer, and a return path over Ka-band at speeds up to 150 kilobits per second on a 60-centimeter diameter dish. With larger-diameter antennae, communication data rates would be pushed up to 2 Mbps and higher.

The ARCS system is designed for asymmetric two-way communications services. But the Astra Ka-band service, based on the Internet Protocol, is much much less sophisticated than the advanced satellites planned from competitors such as Hughes Spaceway and Teledesic LLC, which will feature digital processing for greater efficiency and precision rerouting capabilities.

CanalMusic currently uses the one-way Astra-Net service to distribute music programs for business, and advertising, at rates of 6 Mbps. "Astra-Net s more expensive technology but it is the best," Alberti said.

Around 100 of CanalMusic's clients in France are receiving multimedia products through the satellite network, but Alberti said that should grow to 1,000 or more throughout four European countries as the company expands this year into Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Another user of Astra-Net, financial information services company Tele Finance, Paris, uses the service to distribute multimedia content such as audio, data streams and Web pages to several hundred institutions in France, including banks.

Move to multicasting

Astra is currently well established in the entertainment business in countries such as Germany, France, Spain and the United Kingdom. "We try to enter markets where we aren't strong today in the TV field, like the Nordic markets, via these multimedia services," Bausch said. "We believe at the beginning there-will be many ISPs who will go for unicasting, [but they] will switch progressively from unicasting to multicasting taking advantage of caching capabilities."

At the start, the networking services will be available throughout western Europe, and with the launch of the Astra 1K satellite in early 2001. geographical coverage will be extended toward eastern Europe and part of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

SES will demonstrate the new service at the ITU's Telecom '99 conference and exhibition in Geneva in October with prototype terminals. All features will be available by second quarter calendar year 2000.

SES's longer term expansion strategy also includes a move beyond Europe into Asia and North America via partnerships with other operators. In Asia, the partner is Asiasat, of which SES owns a one-third stake; in North America, the search for a satellite partner goes on.

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