Service Coverage
KaComm will provide 100% coverage of Australia and its offshore islands. No other technology provides ADLS2+ equivalent services to all Australians, regardless of where they live, work or travel. KaComm can also provide 100% coverage of New Zealand.
Service Performance
KaComm services are designed to deliver the video-driven capacity requirements of the next generation of internet applications. KaComm gives all Australians equal service, with ADSL2+ equivalence providing subscribers minimum download speeds of 12 Megabits per second and upload speeds of 2 Megabits per second, regardless of location. These service speeds meet the requirements of the Commonwealth Government’s National Broadband Network initiative. Higher data speeds will be available for premium service and special applications.
Additionally KaComm has integrated a broadcast payload into its design suitable for the delivery of IPTV type services across the Australian mainland time zones.
Service Pricing
KaComm eliminates the digital divide between cities and the bush by providing equal wholesale pricing to all Australians, regardless of their location. Rural subscribers will be free to choose service from competing retail providers delivering different mixes of capability and service, thereby enjoying the same benefits of competition as do other Australians in the cities.
The cost for consumers to access KaComm’s satellite broadband service will be competitive with equivalent terrestrial services.
The volume production of customer premises equipment (CPE) spurred by similar Ka-Band satellite broadband solutions under development in North America and Europe will mean that Australian satellite broadband retailers will be able to pass on significant equipment cost savings to their subscribers.
Applications
The KaComm service has been designed to provide virtually the entire suite of services that urban ADSL2+ terrestrial subscribers enjoy, including:
- Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).
- High Definition Video Teleconferencing.
- File download, including file, audio and video.
- File upload, including file, audio and video.
- Email and web surfing.
- IPTV,
- Video on demand
The KaComm service has been designed to be compatible with Australia’s High Definition television standard to ensure that the full range of consumer media options will be supported into the future.
Service Performance
The third generation technology being deployed in the KaComm satellite network builds on two decades of continuous advancement in satellite technology that brings the performance of terrestrial networks to satellite networks. Whereas application performance on earlier generations of satellite networks was impacted by satellite-specific phenomena such as rain fade and latency, robustness-enhancing features of later-generation technology such as adaptive coding and modulation, Quality of Service management and IP packet prioritization, protocol enhancing proxy (PEP), data compression, HTTP pre-fetching, and DNS caching make the performance of KaComm and similar satellite networks nearly indistinguishable from the performance encountered on terrestrial networks. Users who experience these latest technology satellite broadband networks consistently report fully satisfactory performance. This is one reason why there are ~ 1 million subscribers to satellite-based broadband in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia.
Rain Fade
Rain fade (the condition where satellite signals are blocked by heavy rain), has been virtually eliminated through improved electronics, better signal coding, and the system’s ability to instantaneously adjust the coding and modulation of transmissions to and from rain affected areas, ensuring good availability for critical applications.
Latency
The distance between the satellite and the ground means that a quarter of a second delay between sending and receiving is unavoidable. Historically this has been exacerbated by limitations in the Internet Protocol (IP) technology that underpins the internet. Modern acceleration techniques have virtually eliminated IP performance degradations (i.e., excessive response times) related to latency, making the latency of satellite unperceivable for most applications, including service such as VoIP, teleconferencing, video download, streaming media, email and web surfing.
Future Proofing
Just like fibre, satellite provides a “pipeline” for delivering Internet access. Much of the smarts of the KaComm system are actually deployed on the ground (at either end of the pipeline), allowing easy upgrade to support new applications. Upgrades in software and hardware across the life of the system allows for the continuous evolution of the solution to match the changing demands of the internet. Just like fibre, satellite delivered Internet is future proof.