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First of 2 Australian NBN Satellites Launched Successfully

Posted by timothy on from the watching-your-traffic-from-above dept.

New submitter aduxorth writes: Sky Muster, the first of the two satellites that will comprise Australia's NBN's Long-Term Satellite Service, has been successfully launched from Guiana Space Centre in South America. The two geostationary satellites will offer a total capacity of 135 gigabits per second, with 25/5Mbps wholesale speeds available to end users. The second satellite is expected to launch next year. Testing of this satellite will start soon and will continue until services are launched early next year.

45 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Say "Hello World/Howdy" by vikingpower · · Score: 1

    to kangaroo farmers in the dust clouds of Kookaburra County, Nullarbor plains.

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  2. Cap? by sims+2 · · Score: 1

    What are the data usage limits on the new service or the cost for that matter?

    Quick check on google turned up this article on gizmodo australia; "Satellite NBN Customers Are Reportedly Getting Shafted On Their Data Caps" http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015...

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  3. Re:700 ms latency, though... by Joce640k · · Score: 1

    You're right, this is a complete waste of time. I don't know why they bothered.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

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  4. No mention of price points? by jandrese · · Score: 1

    The article seems to have failed to mention the price point for the service. That's a big sticking point with satellite broadband.

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    I read the internet for the articles.
    1. Re:No mention of price points? by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      Sure it is ... but I'm sure there's some sufficiently remote places in Australia who would never get it otherwise. I mean, aren't some of these ranches (or whatever they're called) literally thousands of square miles?

      Nobody is going to run a cable past your house when your 'driveway' takes hours to drive down, and your nearest neighbor is a few hours away.

      So, if your choice is "no internet at all", or "expensive satellite coverage ... which are you going to take?

      The rules are different when you're so far in the middle of nowhere there's no other option.

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    2. Re:No mention of price points? by jabuzz · · Score: 1

      So the solution to that is to launch at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars a couple of satellites, which might last 15 years tops. I would have serious doubts that this is cheaper than running some fibre even in the short term let alone the long term.

    3. Re:No mention of price points? by gstoddart · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, either the people who did this are complete morons .. or they've worked out their business model and decided it is viable.

      I mean, who is going to string thousands of kilometers of fiber through the outback?

      Me, I'm thinking by the time you build and launch the satellites you've give it some thought, and that random comments on the internet aside, have probably concluded it is worth it ... by whatever metrics you use to make that decision.

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    4. Re:No mention of price points? by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1

      The internet is smarter than people who do things for a living.

    5. Re:No mention of price points? by cdrudge · · Score: 1

      Price depends on the reseller. Just google NBN satellite price and you'll get a variety of answers. Here's one for example.

    6. Re:No mention of price points? by jabuzz · · Score: 2

      What business model would that be? It is Australia's NBN which is a government funded scheme to provide a new national broadband network. Most of the 400,000 premises that the NBN satellite connect will be in remote small towns. Places like Coober Pedy not stations in the middle of nowhere.

      The NBN satellite program is around 1.5 billion USD, that is an awful lot of fibre optic cable, and in 15-20 years time when the satellite packs in will need to be spent again, while the steel armoured fibre will be doing just fine, carrying way more data at much higher speeds.

      In the long run the only game in town is fibre, *EVERYTHING* else is a stop gap. This is a very very expensive stop gap.

    7. Re:No mention of price points? by gstoddart · · Score: 2

      Well, in the mean time, people will be able to have satellite internet now ... as opposed to waiting 15-20 years in the hope that someone eventually strings cable to them.

      I have an aunt and uncle here in North America .. they're on an old fashioned party line and can't get cable ... because they're about 3km past the end of the cabling, and would have to spend HUGE amounts of money to get it ran as far as them. Like pay thousands of dollars for every few hundred feet since the companies don't see it as worth their time.

      I know people who can't get internet, but instead rely on a cellular router to be their internet. Again, if they want anything over a wire they have to pay thousands of dollars.

      Sometimes, the cost to string cable and all that entails, or the sheer number of years likely to wasted until it happens means that "stop gap" means you can actually see a solution, instead of hoping in 15-20 years you have a solution ... which in 15-20 years might still be 15-20 away.

      A lot of this stuff never actually seems to happen. So, then it's not a stop-gap, it's the only damned way it will get done.

      I'm betting in 15-20 years, a lot of people would still find they're no closer to having it.

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    8. Re:No mention of price points? by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      >> I mean, who is going to string thousands of kilometers of fiber through the outback?

      Well there are plenty of big cities on both sides of Australia, and just outback in the middle. I don't know either way but I'd be *really* surprised if there is really no cables running through the outback connecting them (phone, data etc).

    9. Re:No mention of price points? by jandrese · · Score: 1

      Yep, it's pretty much as expected. AUS$25 for a 4GB data cap, going up to AUS$95 for 40GB, although you have to use more than half of that at night.

      It is nice to see that they offer some personal hosting space. And that they're still running it off of the 1998 machine they originally set up for it with the 1GB HDD so they can only give people 25MB of space. You don't see those much anymore.

      No IPv6 support is a bummer too. If you are launching a bird in 2015, the service should support IPv6.

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      I read the internet for the articles.
    10. Re:No mention of price points? by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      I would have serious doubts that this is cheaper than running some fibre even in the short term let alone the long term.

      You do understand quite how the population of Australia is dispersed right?
      Well let me help you with it. Australia is only a bit smaller than the USA and has less than 1/10th of the population. The population we have is heavily centered around a handfull of major cities on the east, west, and south coast with two minor cities up north. Inland there is nothing. We don't have a Dallas, we don't have a St Louis, no Oklahoma city, or a Denver. What little population we have in the bush is highly decentralised to the point where we own the world biggest single lot of private land, and some people have even managed to claim a whole part of Australia as it's own country.

      What we do have is Texas style heat and even worse UV indexes so just throwing cables down across the desert will result in something that will last even less than 15 years. Speaking of effort we also have one of the most expensive labour forces in the world, and high cost of products, so take a rough estimate of what it would cost to run the fibre and then triple and you may start getting into the ballpark.

      Running fibre is about the single most expensive activity possible and the cost analysis was done (note I didn't say cost benefit, fibre in the rural areas failed purely on cost grounds without even considering the tiny amount of people out there), and to top it all off it wasn't even done by the current anti-internet government, it was done by the previous government and even they couldn't justify the cost of fibre out there.

      You don't decide to launch satellites just because.

    11. Re:No mention of price points? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      It's Australia. Think of the most ridiculous price you can imagine and then double it. You'll be pretty close.

    12. Re:No mention of price points? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Prepare to be surprised

      http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/546043/perth_sydney_connected_by_submarine_cable/

      People who are not from Australia seem to find it difficult to understand how empty the middle of Australia is. Running thru the Outback(in this case places like the Great Sandy Dessert) is like running cable thru Mars.

    13. Re:No mention of price points? by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

      while I don't agree with much that is being done with the NBN (under this or the previous government). It would be a FUCK load cheaper for the satellite solution than running fibre. I don't think you have any concept of just how sparsely populated most of Australia is, especially in the outback it can be a 100+ km to your neighbour, you have tiny communities of just a handful of people. running fibre to all these places would cost exponentially more than these very overpriced satellites.

    14. Re:No mention of price points? by Xiaran · · Score: 1

      Back in the day I used to work on systems that had to maintain modem links to rural locations in VIC and NSW from Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. Compared to the actual Outback those places are in downtown New York for Australia and they were still insanely unreliable(Telstra had a commitment to maintain at least a 300baud rate on lines(!!) and it often wasn't and we had to complain). People from outside of Australia just don't understand.

    15. Re:No mention of price points? by dbIII · · Score: 1

      So, if your choice is "no internet at all", or "expensive satellite coverage ... which are you going to take?

      There is already expensive satellite coverage - the plan with these two satellites is cheap and much higher capacity than linking to a satellite over Dubai that charges a lot more per kb and could never handle the volume of customers that is planned.
      Some people may notice that the angle to a satellite over Dubai is getting close to the horizon (~20 degrees?) for the east coast of Australia, but most of Australia is very flat. This new one will be pretty close to overhead (in comparison, it's still over the equator), but the more important thing is the volume of traffic it can commit to Australian customers.

    16. Re:No mention of price points? by dbIII · · Score: 1

      I would have serious doubts that this is cheaper than running some fibre

      The distances are staggering and the population density is low. It would be like running fibre to tiny settlements on the north coast of Alaska for an almost direct comparison.

    17. Re:No mention of price points? by dbIII · · Score: 1
      The satellite IS for all those people in the middle of nowhere.

      The NBN satellite program is around 1.5 billion USD, that is an awful lot of fibre optic cable

      Not when you are measuring it in tens of thousands of kilometres once you work out the paths.

    18. Re:No mention of price points? by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Because it has not been announced yet. There has only been a mention that there will be a range of prices to discourage a few users hogging all of the bandwidth.

    19. Re:No mention of price points? by dbIII · · Score: 1

      They already have such a connection and it's nowhere near good enough for current traffic.

    20. Re:No mention of price points? by dbIII · · Score: 1

      That's connecting to the old stuff. The details for the new service are not out yet so when the service starts next year we'll be able to see if it has IPv6 or not - but I'd be astonished if it didn't.

    21. Re:No mention of price points? by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      The other reality of course creating and maintaining road roads is hugely more expensive than laying cable, many orders of magnitude greater. So if they are serviced by a public road at a huge loss to the state (considering traffic volumes) than why is a cable strung between poles such a nation bankrupting exercise or is the assessment being based purely upon greed and the desire for unlimited profits. Keep in mind the fibre optic cable is cheaper than laying the equivalent existing copper service over that same distance. You know what I say to this, giddyap pony express we can't afford that darned telegraph, with so few users and such huge distances, uh huh.

      --
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    22. Re:No mention of price points? by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

      1.5 billion USD would not even make a dent in the cost of the amount of fibre you would need to cover people in outback Australia. even replacing the satellites every 10 years would likely be a huge saving by comparison.

    23. Re:No mention of price points? by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

      it won't be 10's of thousands, it will be in the hundreds of thousands or more likely a million+ kilometres of cable needed if you actually expect to hook up houses. remember the northern territory alone is around 1.5 million square kilometres and that is not even half of the area you need to cover. There are people in NT where there driveway alone can be 100km, you could be averaging close to a million dollars a house to hook them up to fibre in a lot of areas.

    24. Re:No mention of price points? by jabuzz · · Score: 1

      Really they seemed to manage running a telegraph cable through the middle of Australia in two years ending in August 1872 at at time where there was not even a map of the interior of Australia. I conclude that running some fibre 150 years later is not unreasonable.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    25. Re:No mention of price points? by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Yes but I wanted to avoid someone asking for an exact figure or dismissing me out of hand so I lowballed the number to something that still justifies it.

    26. Re:No mention of price points? by dave420 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but north/south not east/west...

    27. Re:No mention of price points? by owski · · Score: 1

      So if they are serviced by a public road at a huge loss to the state

      They're not serviced by a public road. You might have a public road (really, a dirt track with the odd and rare sign) and then 20 house each 100 miles away from that road in different directions. So you'd need to string a couple thousand miles of fiber along the "public road", and then another couple thousand miles just to get those 20 houses hooked up. Multiply that a thousand times more and there you go.

      Imagine wiring up a thousand small towns where each town is so spread out you need a thousand miles of fiber just to hook them up to the main line, which itself is tens of thousands of miles long. Then you can start to see the scale.

    28. Re:No mention of price points? by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      Just a blatant liar. Why bother , yeah sure then can transport their animals to market on a dirt track, yeah sure not problems. Do you have any idea at all of the difference between a gravel road and a bitmen paved road (the bitumen water proof coating to extend the life of the compacted road). Clearing, grading, placing gravel and compacting the material all cost more than the final bitumen coating (the problem with the bitumen coating, getting it to location from metropolitan areas), were as the gravel to produce the base can be sourced relatively locally from a suitable source. Laying that cable has nothing at all, not in the slightest on producing a road..

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      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  5. It traveled up with ARSAT-2... by slimshady76 · · Score: 2

    the second communications satellite built in Argentina!!!

  6. Re:700 ms latency, though... by Tailhook · · Score: 2

    The latency is bad, but not that bad. Earth to geostationary and back round trip is about 250ms. Switching hardware and ground relay adds a few tens of milliseconds more, so typically you're well above 250ms but not usually more than 300ms. 700ms is some other problem; congestion or something.

    But yes, the long round trip makes these systems unsuitable for low latency applications; certainly real time gaming is impossible, but also even just voice communication becomes awkward with that much delay. Some popular online games can be played with high latency; I know of EVE players that play successfully over satellite. That game only updates clients about four times a second at best.... so another quarter second of lag isn't that big a deal.

    If your alternative is living in the dark then tens of megabits of high-latency bandwidth is pretty damn appealing.

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  7. Re:700 ms latency, though... by gstoddart · · Score: 1

    700 ms latency, though. You'll want to have pre-caching turned on in your browser, and don't ever expect to play games outside of simple, single-player Flash based games.

    Maybe they plan on using it for more important things than games?

    So, a google search for "Australia remotest town" comes up with Telfer, which sounds like it's so far past the arse end of nowhere as to be unimaginable to most of us.

    When everything is hours away (if not days), 700ms latency is probably quite a step up.

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  8. Re:700 ms latency, though... by pacman+on+prozac · · Score: 1

    The 700ms is probably talking about the network RTT seen when you ping a host as the data is travelling up to the geostationary satellite and back twice, once as it goes from you to the end host and then once again on the return trip.

    However most network traffic doesn't behave like that, TCP doesn't acknowledge every packet in a connection, so not everything would suffer that kind of delay.

  9. Re:700 ms latency, though... by DrXym · · Score: 1
    And the latency is because the the satellites are in a geostationary orbit a horribly way long way away - signals having to go out 35000km out to the satellite and back again to some base station.

    The other alternative is lots of satellites in a low earth orbit, with one coming into a range as another one leaves and some kind of data relay mechanism for sending data to a base station. A more complex solution but latencies would be much lower and it would probably scale better. The same satellites could even be used to service parts of Africa and South America.

  10. Re:700 ms latency, though... by petermgreen · · Score: 1

    The latency is bad, but not that bad. Earth to geostationary and back round trip is about 250ms. Switching hardware and ground relay adds a few tens of milliseconds more, so typically you're well above 250ms

    Network latencies are usually quoted as "round trip time" (that is the time from sending a packet to the server to getting a reply back). The round trip between you and the server passes through the sattelite twice so that brings you up to 500ms.

    And that is for a link where you have a timeslot availible already. If you have to request a timeslot from the sattelite before transmitting then you just added another 250ms.

    If your alternative is living in the dark then tens of megabits of high-latency bandwidth is pretty damn appealing.

    I agree

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  11. Death Adders In Space by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

    This is the beginning of the end.

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    1. Re:Death Adders In Space by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      Naw, I've still working on me Fosters.

    2. Re:Death Adders In Space by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      I hope you've brought enough for the whole class.

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  12. I Have Reservations the Sat's by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

    I didn't see one Foster's logo anywhere on the launch vehicle. There not Aussie's then. Probably the launch was from Malaysia.

  13. Sky Muster Satellite Launch .. by nickweller · · Score: 1

    Sky Muster Satellite Launch

    1. Re:Sky Muster Satellite Launch .. by bug1 · · Score: 1

      'Sky Muster', best name ever, only a child could think up such a creative and succinct name.

  14. Re:700 ms latency, though... by dbIII · · Score: 1

    The other alternative is lots of satellites in a low earth orbit, with one coming into a range as another one leaves and some kind of data relay mechanism for sending data to a base station

    That's ideal, but the problem (as seen with Iridium doing that) is getting enough people around the planet to agree to pay for it. It's a management/diplomacy problem that gets in the way of an ideal technical solution.