A EUROPEAN satellite aimed at delivering broadband internet connections where there is inadequate terrestrial connection has been launched from Kazakhstan.
The satellite will concentrate services on millions of homes in what are called “not spots”, which have no decent connection.
Known as the Ka-Sat, the satellite lifted off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan in a flight that took over nine hours. It is the second such satellite to be launched, a month after the Hylas-1 satellite operated by Avanti Communications in London.
The latest satellite could provide broadband connection for up to two million homes, compared to 300,000 homes for the Hylas platform. Satellites usually take weeks to become operational but this latest endeavour is not expected to be operating fully until the middle of 2011. It is positioned 36,000km above the equator.
The Ka-Sat is operated by Paris-based Eutelsat, one of the three biggest fixed satellite service companies, whose fleet of spacecraft transmits thousands of TV channels. A number of its existing platforms provide internet connectivity but the Ka-Sat is the first satellite specifically dedicated to broadband.
“As many as 30 million households in Europe are not served at all or get high mediocrity of service,” said Eutelsat CEO Michel de Rosen in an interview with BBC News. He said “these could be people in the countryside or in the mountains, sometimes not very far from large cities. Ka-Sat is an answer to that problem.”
Much of the satellite’s structure including its propulsion system and communications payload were made by EADS Astrium in Stevenage and Portsmouth in England. Final testing of the spacecraft took place at Astrium’s factory in Toulouse, France, before shipment to Baikonur.
The satellite’s 70GBps will be channelled through 82 spot beams to different markets from North Africa to southern Scandinavia and a small segment of the Middle East will also be reached. Eutelsat has signed 70 agreements with distributors across that geographical spread.
The satellite is fired by a Russian proton rocket which had failed on a previous mission when three satellite-navigation spacecraft crashed in the Pacific Ocean.