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Japan to Deploy Massive Broadband Satellite
demachina writes "Japan has announced plans to deploy a massive broadband satellite operational in 2015. It will provide 100 Mbit/sec service to mountains, remote islands and bullet trains along with comm for disaster recovery. Its giant 66 ft. diameter dish is supposed to be able to receive even weak cell phones signals. Of course, the ping times wont be so good."
It's not really important anyway. Normal users don't use the ping command or even heard of it.
I thought Space was owned by America? I can't see George standing for this, he'll use his death star to shoot it out the sky.
DirecWay (from DirecTV) offers satellite return service - no phone line necessary. I used it for about 6 months some time ago (when this area was total broadband hell, as opposed to only being partial broadband hell). It does work, but some major caveats:
But, if it's your only option, it's great. Seriously - in the same situation, I'd use it again
Being that it's a relatively compact island, I wonder if any consideration was given to a series of satellites in low-Earth orbit.
Many satellites, all in one orbit that takes each satellite across the nation along the long axis (i.e., north-to-south) should provide continuous coverage with very low latency.
Given the importance of VoIP it would seem that latency isn't something you can so easily get rid of.
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Why didn't you know?
In 2015, ten years time, this might not be such a great speed? Although it's quite fast now, and will probably still be reasonably useful in the future, it might be about as popular as dialup is in my city (not very). Who knows what zany download speeds will be the norm in the future, across electrical wires or otherwise.
Over here in Sweden, we have for a rather long time now had satellite ISP's for the more remote areas where people can't get DSL and want something better than modem speed. However, it was always very costly and totally not worth the money when put against any other common broadband technology, and I doubt this new Japanese satellite will have very low subscription costs.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
One thing that the news item left out of this wonderful product is that the average latency of about 800 ms for a satellite connection makes the product a poor supplier of interactive internet browsing. It will suffer the same problems that the Directway system does.
That doesn't mean it doesn't have a lot of uses. It just means that when the marketing types start hyping the product they conveniently overlook its limitations. And in comparing it to fiber optic without mentioning latency issues, they are doing just that.
I've had this argument before and we never came to a sensible conclusion. Personally I still think that high bandwidth satellite data transfer has much merit as long as you can get the satellites up there cheaply enough.
;-).
A geostationary orbit is about 35,000km up. lets call that 50,000km as we might not be right underneath it. Light travels at 300,000km/s so the travel time for a message is ~166ms. multiply by 4 (a->sat, sat->b, b->sat, sat->a) gives ~666ms, the latency of the beast
OK, not the greatest but pinging slashdot gives me an average of 349ms from London,UK so it's not as good but then not terrible either.
I wouldn't want to carry out interactive surgery or try and play a concert with remote players (latency kills live music!) but for just getting hold of and/or disseminating info it's not too bad.
If the satellite were to be placed in a far lower orbit then latency numbers will drop. I believe this requires spin stabilisers and some sort of engine to keep the satellite from plummeting to Earth though.
I can't say I'm an expert in satellite orbits and I can't find any more details on the proposed orbit of this project. Anyone care to help me out?
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
A geosynchronous satellite orbits at a height of approximately 38,500,000m. Light travels at a speed of approximately 300,000,000m/s. It therefore takes light approximately 250ms to make a round trip. This might be sub-optimal for gaming, but its about the ping time I remember from a modem. You might run into some problems with TCP rate limiting though - it's probably best to run some non-TCP protocol over the satellite link.
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Japan apparently has their own satellite launching infrastructure. Otherwise I think NASA and ESA both help with launching commercial satellites, it doesn't seem to be a big deal anymore.
The beam width is dependant on a lot of things. You can adjust the focus of the transmitter to turn the beam into a big fuzzy spot.
The most interesting technology about satellite communications is based on low orbit satellites networks, but cernaly not on geostationary satellites!
It must be only an attempt to capture all the radio traffic in Japan from a single dish and use credits dedicated to Research for 'national security'.
Anyway, this technology is already experimented in the Thalys train, linking Paris to Brussels http://www.thalys.com/be/en/wi-fi/overview
Actually, it has been determined by one of the largest consumer data providers that satellite broadband is not economically viable. Hughes, the owner of DirecTV, had planned a massive rollout of this technology, due this year. After they had designed and (mostly) built the satellites, the numbers didn't look too rosy. Instead, they re-tasked the satellites for the new HD/MPEG4 DirecTV market. It is the classic case of a company spinning a failed product into a "fantasic innovation" (if you believe the new ads).
So, no, the US hasn't been left behind. The market forces have decided that there aren't enough dollars to support a venture and make lots of cash. This sucks for those in rural america, as the landline folks have also decided that you won't make them money. Our democracy and capitalism fails us in insideous ways. This is one example.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The re-tasking of the sats had less to do with broadband viability and MUCH MORE to do with Rupert Murdoch wanting to control DirecTV and make it competitive with other TV offerings like cable. At best you might say that NewsCorp/Murdoch didn't see broadband via sat. as viable but even that is pure supposition. By buying HNS, Murdoch got DTV and 2 satellite assets (including the orbit slots) that could be quickly converted to provide HD programming. From a business perspective this was a very smart move to give DTV a competitive offering now instead of in another couple years once they built their own satellites. Let me be clear though that to say Hughes gave up on broadband by satellite is an ignorant statement to make.
The current offering from Hughes, DIRECWAY, has over 250,000 broadband customers. They are getting new customers with home users as well as businesses (think chain stores with 1,000s of outlets, many of them out of reach of other broadband solutions). Our European division was recently signed to provide broadband for a leading credit company. All of this information is available at www.hns.com.
Also, the planned Spaceway offering, even with delays, will still be available well before this Japanese offering. Good luck to them getting all of the pieces together by 2015.
Obviously, I am being careful about what I say since I don't want to get in trouble with our corporate folks while trying to defend my company. The truth is that everything I know and see indicates a committment to satellite broadband by HNS.
An advice to our Japanese friends:
RUN LIKE HELL if the ping times get exceptionally better!!!