Ka-band “opening the door” for satellite operators to compete with fiber and cable providers

UK: Globecomm – the satellite-based managed network services giant with ten years of Ka-band experience – today told the IBC conference that Ka-band was creating enormous opportunities for satellite operators as well as being a crucial factor in bringing advanced triple play content to rural areas across the world.

Paul Scardino, VP of Corporate Sales and Marketing, was speaking at the World Teleport Association Dialogue Panel. “People will increasingly watch television by viewing exactly what they want and when they want to watch it,” he said.

“The power, speed and bandwidth capabilities of Ka-band are not only perfectly suitable for this need but come in a changing world where the TV and computer have become one and the same. People will watch news and sport programming live – as it actually happens – and with the rest of their favourite programmes, they will choose the viewing time. This matches perfectly to the added benefit in today’s content-hungry market that Ka-band is totally interactive.”

This appealing offering, truly competitive interactive triple play via satellite, will help to make satellite providers more cost effective compared to fiber and cable offerings. But of course traditional telcos and cable providers could also adopt Ka-band to help meet the increasing need and clamour to support rural areas – especially broadband black holes known as “not spots”. This coincided exactly with the thoughts of Commissioner for Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes, who in May announced that satellite “can provide a great contribution to deliver the important goal of Basic broadband for all.”

“Ka-band can more than meet the challenge of the digital divide and there is a lot of low hanging fruit for operators of all kinds to pick by using it to meet rural demand across the world,” Scardino said. He also saw increased demand for Ka-band as triple play service demand expanded into new areas such as social media and multi-screen viewing.

Globecomm first supplied a Ka-band solution to Loral Space Systems in 2001. Today, the company is considered a global expert of total turnkey Ka-band solutions.