Japan Launches "Super-Speed" Internet Satellite

Posted by kdawson on Saturday February 23, 2008 @09:20AM from the fiber-in-the-sky dept.

A number of readers wrote in about the launch this morning of a Japanese H-2A rocket carrying a Kizuna ("Winds") satellite into orbit. Kizuna is intended to provide "super high-speed data transmission" for Japan and Southeast Asia. The news stories on the launch, such as the AP's linked here, are short on technical detail. For example they say the satellite successfully achieved orbit 175 miles above the earth — hardly suitable for Internet communications to a specific area on the surface (remember Teledesic?). Reader nebulus4 provided a link to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency site with an illustration and a little more detail. Such as the fact that Kizuna is destined for geosync orbit, and that a 45-cm antenna will equip eventual users for 155 Mbps down / 6 Mbps up, whereas a 5-m antenna will allow enterprises and ISPs to tap into 1.2 Gbps down. Given the latency to geosync orbit, you probably wouldn't want to use Kizuna to play an online shooter.

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Latency? What latency? by kentrel · 2008-02-23 11:09 · Score: 0, Redundant

This might seem like a stupid question, but why would there be latency with a satellite link? With radio waves traveling at the speed of light what difference is 175 miles going to make?

I always thought the reason for latency was a combination of signals going through slower copper wires and being processed by various routers and servers along the way.

Can someone clear this up?