I'm the CTO and of the BusinessCom Internet via Satellite (www.bcsatellite.net) which is widely deploying VSAT and VoIP links worldwide and particulary for US Soldiers in Iraq. We have more than 1500 US soldiers currently using our services in Iraq and Afghanistan to communicate back with their dear ones in US and everybody seem to be pretty happy. I can't say we offer the cheapest service in the world, more like we are insisting on the optimal balance of price and performance. First of all, to assure the adequate quality of the VoIP phone call, the customer should understand that there's a variety of VSAT technologies available on the market.
Below, I would just paste the standard text of my reply to compare several VSAT technologies which are present on the market. In a nutshell - this is how the broadband satellite industry looks today:
1. Hughes and Gilat are the largest players with DirecWay, PES, Starband, Spacenet, and other services. The thing to keep in mind about these guys is that their solutions were designed for credit card approvals and lottery ticket sales. They were designed for transaction-oriented services - occasional short transmissions, and they do an excellent job of this. What you see is an attempt to shoe-horn their technology into the IP WAN business when it was never designed for it - and it does a poor to mediocre job of this. They have long latency (3 second transaction time was part of the original design criteria), horrible jitter which kills VoIP or requires large jitter buffers that store the voice for an extra second or two to remove the jitter, and their data service is inefficient and sluggish. This class of stations is priced approximately 2000 Euro for the standard system.
2. DVB/RCS and similar systems from companies like Viasat Linkstar, Shiron, Tachyon, Vipersat and others. These systems are an improvement over the Hughes/Gilat stuff, but they have done little to improve the uplink technology. Jitter continues to be a big problem for these products. They do not support voice well; they take up to 10 seconds to allocate CIR bandwidth
(when they support it), pings are longer and more inconsistent, etc. The hardware prices are usually pretty good, but the service prices tend to be higher because of the inefficiency. Because of this many of the network operators who sell these services tend to oversubscribe their networks too much, which creates poor performance. The business model is designed so that you can only make money with large oversubscribed networks, rather than smaller customized networks like iDirect. However, DVB/RCS is still the best system on the market for home and small office/Internet cafe access where VoIP/VTC is not required. DVB/RCS class of stations is priced similiarly to the traditional TDMA systems, approximately 2000 Euro for the standard system.
3. DVB/SCPC uses shared bandwidth on the download and SCPC on the upload. This isn't a bad solution, but it is expensive, because the uplink bandwidth is completely dedicated and is therefore very expensive. Adding to the cost is the fact that a small amount of guard band is required between each SCPC carrier and this wasted capacity has to be built into the cost. This solution generally requires a mishmash of equipment. DVB receivers plus an SCPC modem, with Cisco router, Mentat TCP Acceleration, and if you want any QoS you have to add a Sitara or Packeteer or Allot box. The combined cost of all these devices, and the expensive nature of the SCPC uplink make this a costly solution with many potential points of failure and finger-pointing. DVB/SCPC stations price is varying, depending on the particular configuration of antenna and BUC. Usually it is within 9000-15000 Euro range for the mid-level station suitable for up to 1 mbit/s uplink.
4. iDirect - This is the first system that was designed from the ground up to support IP in a WAN environment. The real
Slashdot Mirror
I'm the CTO and of the BusinessCom Internet via Satellite (www.bcsatellite.net) which is widely deploying VSAT and VoIP links worldwide and particulary for US Soldiers in Iraq. We have more than 1500 US soldiers currently using our services in Iraq and Afghanistan to communicate back with their dear ones in US and everybody seem to be pretty happy. I can't say we offer the cheapest service in the world, more like we are insisting on the optimal balance of price and performance. First of all, to assure the adequate quality of the VoIP phone call, the customer should understand that there's a variety of VSAT technologies available on the market.
Below, I would just paste the standard text of my reply to compare several VSAT
technologies which are present on the market. In a nutshell - this is
how the broadband satellite industry looks today:
1. Hughes and Gilat are the largest players with DirecWay, PES, Starband,
Spacenet, and other services. The thing to keep in mind about these guys is
that their solutions were designed for credit card approvals and lottery
ticket sales. They were designed for transaction-oriented services -
occasional short transmissions, and they do an excellent job of this. What
you see is an attempt to shoe-horn their technology into the IP WAN business
when it was never designed for it - and it does a poor to mediocre job of
this. They have long latency (3 second transaction time was part of the
original design criteria), horrible jitter which kills VoIP or requires
large jitter buffers that store the voice for an extra second or two to
remove the jitter, and their data service is inefficient and sluggish.
This class of stations is priced approximately 2000 Euro for the standard
system.
2. DVB/RCS and similar systems from companies like Viasat Linkstar, Shiron,
Tachyon, Vipersat and others. These systems are an improvement over the
Hughes/Gilat stuff, but they have done little to improve the uplink
technology. Jitter continues to be a big problem for these products. They do
not support voice well; they take up to 10 seconds to allocate CIR bandwidth
(when they support it), pings are longer and more inconsistent, etc. The
hardware prices are usually pretty good, but the service prices tend to be
higher because of the inefficiency. Because of this many of the network
operators who sell these services tend to oversubscribe their networks too
much, which creates poor performance. The business model is designed so that
you can only make money with large oversubscribed networks, rather than
smaller customized networks like iDirect. However, DVB/RCS is still the best
system on the market for home and small office/Internet cafe access where
VoIP/VTC is not required. DVB/RCS class of stations is priced similiarly to
the traditional TDMA systems, approximately 2000 Euro for the standard system.
3. DVB/SCPC uses shared bandwidth on the download and SCPC on the upload.
This isn't a bad solution, but it is expensive, because the uplink bandwidth
is completely dedicated and is therefore very expensive. Adding to the cost
is the fact that a small amount of guard band is required between each SCPC
carrier and this wasted capacity has to be built into the cost. This
solution generally requires a mishmash of equipment. DVB receivers plus an
SCPC modem, with Cisco router, Mentat TCP Acceleration, and if you want any
QoS you have to add a Sitara or Packeteer or Allot box. The combined cost of
all these devices, and the expensive nature of the SCPC uplink make this a
costly solution with many potential points of failure and finger-pointing.
DVB/SCPC stations price is varying, depending on the particular configuration
of antenna and BUC. Usually it is within 9000-15000 Euro range for the
mid-level station suitable for up to 1 mbit/s uplink.
4. iDirect - This is the first system that was designed from the ground up
to support IP in a WAN environment. The real