 Buying Bandwidth and Other Digital Dilemmas
By Jim Vautrot, President & CEO
Satellite & Technology Corporation.
Remember the good old days? When you could buy a gallon of gasoline for under a dollar? And a good-sized new car for under $10,000? And booking time on a satellite was just a matter of when and where? Well, those days are gone, probably forever.
The big difference in the satellite world is digital signal transmission. Now it's not just a matter of finding a bird with an open transponder for the time you need. You have to find the right bandwidth, and a transponder that is compatible with your encoding system.
Then you have to worry about compression standards, and data rate. Will it be video, audio, IP, or all of the above? Will it be DVB, DTV, HDTV, and in what form or format? What is the Forward Error Correction rate? How many MHZ? It's enough to make you long for the days when program distribution meant putting a videotape in a shipping box.
But despite all of the new complications, the good news about digital signal transmission is that it opens the door to many new possibilities. Now you can send several channels of video on the same transponder. Multiplex a half-dozen video feeds from the same uplink. Slice up your transponder into multiple channels. Mix analog and digital signals on the same transponder.
Internet over satellite? No problem. Satellites offer the best way to get around Internet traffic jams and bandwidth bottlenecks. When the same data needs to be delivered to a large number of individual locations, satellite transmission offers the most reliable alternative.
Distance learning in particular is especially well-suited to IP over satellite distribution. Many existing private satellite networks are combining IP with their video feeds, and the combination offers enriched content and improved training results. Small-dish systems are also opening up exciting new options for program distribution. Look for considerable growth in this area.
And what about streaming, or is it screaming? Streaming media is all the buzz right now, and everybody seems to be jumping onto the broadband bandwagon. But when it comes to broadband distribution, it's not just the size of the pipe that matters; it's the size of the port as well. And the number of ports, and the number of servers.
Any network is only as fast as its slowest link. The Internet is no exception. Anyone who has tried streaming media knows about "Network Congestion." We helped one of our clients do Internet streaming to supplement satellite distribution of an electronic field trip. The morning session was fine, but that afternoon Microsoft unveiled Windows 2000. And the media stream turned into a trickle. Network Congestion strikes again.
But streaming will continue to flow, and the Internet will continue to grow. Satellite & Technology is working to find the best solutions for its clients, whether it is a digital or analog signal delivered by satellite, streaming media over the Internet, or terrestrial linkups for backhaul or point-to point connections.
We have helped many clients upgrade to digital systems to maximize their investment in space segment and better achieve their programming objectives. We have become a partner as well as a service provider, and look forward to continuing these relationships and building new ones in the years to come. The future presents many challenges, but we believe every challenge is a new opportunity for growth and development.
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