NBS in trouble already.

Short Grass

Last week I attended an NBS meeting in my area which was attended by about 90 people. The usual suspects were at the top table. The boss man of ComReg John Doherty was there together with representatives from 3Ireland and some other dudes. Most of the meeting was taken up by these guys telling us how great 3 was and how great the NBS was but they were not getting the message across to the floor with the result that Doherty was getting more than a little miffed. Because of his west Brit mid Atlantic accent every time he spoke he drew sniggers from certain sections of the crowd.
The guy from 3 was in overdrive telling us how technically advanced the whole shebang was going to be and that they were going to bring us out of the dark ages. Then a funny thing happened .....
A man stood up and asked what the situation was about satellite. The guy from 3 gave a big spiel as to how an English company called Avanti were providing satellite access for 8% of the scheme using a state of the art new satellite which was the dog's boll..
The man from the floor then asked our friend from 3 was he aware that this mighty satellite had not yet been launched and looked unlikely to be launched until at best the end of the year but possible into 2010. The guy from 3 then did a wobbler and lost the head completely with the man on the floor telling him he was talking rubbish etc. and getting more angry by the minute. The fact that this geezer so obviously lost control while on the podium caused everybody in the room to sit up and pay attention as it was obvious that the questioner had touched a nerve. It gets better.
It turns out that the man on the floor was a member of Irish Rural Link and he had all his facts right. (Apparently the organisers were not aware that anybody from Irish Rural Link was in the audience).
Despite the antics of the guy from 3 and the guy from ComReg the man from Irish Rural Link stood his ground and gave them chapter and verse relative to the NBS in general but particularly the satellite aspect of it.
Another guy put the boot into Doherty by explaining that he was an ISP in Kerry and that with the connivance of ComReg Eircom were spending millions on bringing broadband to the Black Valley in Kerry. He said that he could do it for much less except he would have to apply for planning whereas Eircom do not ( this bit I could not understand).
The meeting was chaired by John Murray from Newstalk and at the end of the evening he called for a show of hands relative to confidence in 3 to provide a Nationwide proper broadband service. Out of 90 people 87 voted no !! The three who voted yes were 3 employees !!
I bet this won't be reported on the ComReg site !
I got some interesting information afterwards. Apparently Avanti have been talking about a KA band satellite for the past three years. The satellite will be called Hylos 1 but at this stage apparently is not built yet. Neither have they announced a launch date and neither have they announced where it is being launched from - not exactly instilling confidence in NBS participants.
As I understand it KA band satellites suffer dramatically from rain fade - how will it fare in the West of Ireland ?
Once more it looks like rural Ireland is still not going to get broadband.

mumhaabu

Thank your for the report short grass invaluable info. Even if a satellite was to be launched they have a tendency to spontaneously explode on their launch pads.

Is there to be more of these meetings held? Whereabouts was this meeting you attended held? Was their a representative of IOFFL present?

watty

Hylas is an experimental sat part funded by ESA, which was to be launched by the the experimental Falcon 9.

Ka does suffer badly from Rain fade. No significant experience of Irish type rain with Ka exists. The problem is usually more severe on the uplink.

Currrent Avanti leased transponders do exist and have Irish coverage, requiring a 1.2m to 1.8m dish in some areas.

Avanti are practically giving away bandwidth on the "new satellite". But all that exists (and maybe only) is
http://www.lyngsat.com/intel903.html
Scroll down till you see avanti
with this very poor covearge for areas in Ireland likely to be given Satellite.

Falcon 9 Progress Update

Saturday, January 10th, 2009

Falcon 9 is now vertical at the Cape!

After a very smooth vehicle mating operation yesterday, we began the process of raising Falcon 9 at 12:45pm EST and approximately 30 minutes later, Falcon 9 was vertical at the Cape.

The process of taking Falcon 9 vertical was a critical step in preparation for our first Falcon 9 launch later this year. This accomplishment culminates several months of rapid progress, made possible only through the hard work and dedication of the entire SpaceX team.

http://www.spacex.com/falcon9.php
The Falcon 9 has never flown.


There is no need for Satellite (800ms minimum latency) if a proper NBS existed. 3 is putting in primarily a mobile phone system, getting subsidized to compete with O2, Vodaphone and Meteor and to undercut proper fixed wireless services in substantial areas of overlap. If the NBS didn't exist, 3 would probabily still be putting nearly 160 new masts and exactly the same service. Which can't ever be broadband.

Sponge Bob

Where was this meeting ShortGrass, sightings of Doherty outside the M50 are rare as hens teeth.

Who 'conducted' it ??

bealtine

Short Grass wrote: »

Last week I attended an NBS meeting in my area which was attended by about 90 people. T

I was at a meeting just like that...

crawler

Again - I am NOT commenting on the NBS here but in relation to Ka band...

EIRP @ 62dBW would make it much less prone to rain fade that the existing Ku bands - watty - did a quick "back of a fag packet" calc - probably 30% less in extreme conditions...simply based on current Ku band power and Ka band power as mentioned.

They still gotta get the bird in the sky first though!

Anyway, as I said - this is not a comment on NBS, just on Watty's comments

watty

That's downlink for reception. The 62dBW makes it about as good as Astra2D due to hugely higher rain fade.

The uplink is the power amplifier and gain of your own backyard dish. Of course the same size dish at Ka is about 3dB to 6dB extra gain compared to Ku. You would then also have 6dB more receive gain on the satellite if it too had same size dish.

You'd want 4W on 65cm rather than 0.5W, assuming we really get one of the spot beams. Also it will be DVB-S2 and for more speed needs more power. Uplink rather than downlink is the big unknown.

My point is that until we know what VSAT is domestically deployed, what the spot beams really are etc, we don't know. Eutelsat's new Ka HotBird at 13E is supposed to have Irish Spot beams too. It could be up 1st.

Anyway 3GHz of bandwidth, Irish Spot beams, 12Gbps capacity or more and 60cm dishes instead of 90cm to 1.8m dishes is all still a year or two away and can't reduce the latency below 790ms.

Even Ka, if it lives up to all it's promises can't compete with Fixed Wireless. It's being touted as cheap Broadband for all by all the Satellite companies involved and that is extremely misleading.

Avanti's Hylass1 is very risky venture and we can't know today when it will happen, if it will happen and how good the upload speed and reliability will be. It shouldn't be part of the NBS any more that LTE should be mentioned.

Short Grass

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Where was this meeting ShortGrass, sightings of Doherty outside the M50 are rare as hens teeth.

Who 'conducted' it ??

The meeting was in the Burlington hotel and was organised by The First Tuesday Network.
The theme of the meeting was "The Recession and what it means for Irish Telecommunications (or something near that).
It was chaired by a guy called John Murray who I believe is from Newstalk.

fergalfrog

If there is any other of these meetings planned can you let me/others know. I for one would like to attend.

bealtine

fergalfrog wrote: »

If there is any other of these meetings planned can you let me/others know. I for one would like to attend.

It was a First Tuesday event, you need to join the First Tuesday network first.
I don't think they have any more planned on this subject.

However I expect other meetings of this nature as the Dept will be eager to try sell this utterly useless idea to all and sundry.

Sponge Bob

Based on their previous record the chances of the Satellite getting into orbit is about 25%.

Typical of 3 to use untried technology , eh!!!

The launch vehicle is a Falcon 9 . It has never flown. It is meant to be reusable , ergo somewhat green !!

Its predecessor for low earth insertion flights is the Falcon 1, they share many components . However the first 3 Falcon 1 flights all failed and only one sucessful flight was completed ....with another one due next month .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1#Launch_log

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9

The NBS Satellite is the third or fourth scheduled launch of this new space vehicle.

I shall be watching agog when the first flight attempts to punt a remote sensing sat of some sort ( probably quasi military ) into orbit later this year .



However it is cheap

http://www.spacex.com/falcon9.php#pricing_and_performance

The satellite itself is also cheap and was largely funded by the British government . It will be on its very first flight too.

Notes on the sat itself.

http://www.bnsc.gov.uk/5920.aspx

A UK/Ireland Spot Ka beam with 500mhz of uplink spectrum and 1500mhz of downlink spectrum should be able to provide circa maz 4500mbits of capacity on the downlink which is very large for a transponder , I allow generous 3 mbits per megahertz and no guardbands etc
However a satellite bounces a signal so half that is reserved for customer-sat and half for sat-groundstation , see topology

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/10-40GHz/responses/avanti.pdf

This still leaves 750mhz or 2250 megabits on the customer side which is huge for a sat , most sat transponders are 30 -35mhz or 100mbits thruput for all customers on that transponder. Its a feckin Lambda for all the UK and Ireland .

However if you put 5000 customers on that they are all contended 4:1 for starters off their nominal 1mbit . The

The NBS covers 1/3 of Ireland by area but about 15% of the population at most . 15% of households is around 250,000 households .
8% of that 15% is 20,000 households .

If every household in the NBS areas who is 'supposed' to get satellite actually takes it then that spot will be running 1mbit @ 16:1 contention nominal and thats before you add any other users in the UK and Ireland ????!

And no , you cannot add another spot beam to increase capacity .

And that presumes the backplane on the sat can handle the thruput from all these spots as well as the Ku band HDTV feeds .

This particular sat is a lot smaller than Astra or Hotbird sats which provide sat telly to most of us . It is only half the size of current generation sats like Hotbird 8 and yet must carry as much fuel for the same design life .

Having said all that I expect Crawler and Watty to kill me for leaving something glaring out

crawler

Nah SB - too many holes to pick and I am tired

Ku is an interesting band and if it works it os good for all sorts of reasons - if not, the world is no worse off.

Again I am NOT commenting here in relation to NBS - just fluffy technology stuff...

bealtine

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Based on their previous record the chances of the Satellite getting into orbit is about 25%.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/oco/main/index.html

spitonmedickie

Just as a follow up Irish Rural Link are holding a seminar on rural broadband in their HQ in Moate, Co. Westmeath from 9:30 to 1 on Friday March 20th. Speakers will include 3 and the Department. Further details and booking info is available on IRL's website www.irishrurallink.ie

Tom Young

I also attended this meeting. I thought the guy from ALTO who spoke managed to make a lot of sense and identified some of the 'quick wins' which could be achieved.

The person from 3 was out of order in my view. He threw a wobbler when the questions came in. If I was from 3 I'd not field a person like that again. It was almost embarrassing.

Seemed to be some stress between Martin Cronin and Doherty - Maybe I am wrong though.

Tom

bealtine

Tom Young wrote: »

I also attended this meeting. I thought the guy from ALTO who spoke managed to make a lot of sense and identified some of the 'quick wins' which could be achieved.

The person from 3 was out of order in my view. He threw a wobbler when the questions came in. If I was from 3 I'd not field a person like that again. It was almost embarrassing.

Seemed to be some stress between Martin Cronin and Doherty - Maybe I am wrong though.

Tom

Point 1 agreed, he seemed an affable and straight to the point type.

Point 2 agreed, he was one of the rudest people I've ever encountered. He was downright rude to those guys from Irish Rural Link.Afterwards I tried to engage him in polite conversation and he just snarled and stormed off, so I cornered him and dragged a few others over.
I wouldn't let him out into public again. I was planning to lodge a formal complaint about him:)

3. the banter between Doherty and Cronin was strained and the barbs were flying. Don't know what that was all about but I can guess.

So this seminar in IRL offices should make for some amusing "exchanges".

Tom Young

So this seminar in IRL offices should make for some amusing "exchanges".

Is there an event on? ...:)

bealtine

Tom Young wrote: »

Is there an event on? ...:)

I've got a ringside seat and some popcorn on order:)

watty

Who's doing the live Web feed?

3?

bealtine

watty wrote: »

Who's doing the live Web feed?

3?

buhaha

Only available on 3 mobiles...(number 3 not the company)

irishguy09

Just been reading about the Avanti Satellite which has not even been schedulled to launch using the yet untested Falcon 9, I also note that Avanti are getting into some hot water with their service delivery in other locations where they have entered into a similar deal.....simply put they are not supply a good service i.e. 1Mbps download speed and they don't have the back-up or support of dealing with broadband customers directly. I have it also on good authority that their Hylas Satellite, the one that their CEO [Mr.David Williams]is talking up at every opportunity he can will not be launched until at least mid 2010 !

Sponge Bob

irishguy09 wrote: »

I have it also on good authority that their Hylas Satellite, the one that their CEO [Mr.David Williams]is talking up at every opportunity he can will not be launched until at least mid 2010 !

Makes sense , the CEO of SpaceX who manufacture the Falcon has just pushed it first launch back a bit at a conference today.

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?board=6.0

Hylas will be on the third Falcon9 . The first may go up this summer .

Hylas was a definite 2009 launch in September , I agree it looks most unlikely now

http://studio.financialcontent.com/Engine?Account=newsob&GUID=3172552&Page=MediaViewer&Ticker=AVN

watty

It was never definate as it is a prototype bird on a prototype rocket