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Thursday, February 10, 2011

Devas- an application developer or service provider

The controversy on agreement between Devas and Antrix corporation rages on. From the press meet, it appears Dr Kasturi Rangan was trying to convince that some of the best brains in satellite communication are at work in Devas and they are developing a new technology. Not much was covered about the technology, so I dig into some.

EchoStar VII and EchoStar VIII in USA are both spot beam satellites. With these two highly powerful spot beam satellites, we can direct about 50 different spot beam “projections” to the continental U.S. and deliver a lot more local programming to those specific areas. Each spot beam has an approximate diameter of 300 miles, making them powerful satellites. Read more.

On applications, there is this paper `Emerging Trends in Multimedia Broad casting' by AK Bhatnagar, CE, AIR& Doordarshan. This application is called Satellite DMB system and there are 4 players in that: Worldspace, MBCo, MAESTRO, ISRO/DEVAS.
Mobile Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) backed by Toshiba provided the system
Two CDM Transponders are equally shared between Japan and Korea
MBSAT satellite launched in May 2004
25 MHz Spectrum from 2630-2655 MHz is used
In Korea, Service being provided by S.K Telecom - Top Mobile Phone Operator
Total system capacity is 20 video, 50 audio and some data channels
Thousands of Terrestrial Gap Filler deployed In Korea and Japan
Reception with hand held devices
WoridSpace Multimedia Service Capabilities
Files can range from HTML files, Video Clips, MP3 files, Text Files etc. Streaming data is also supported.
Content is directly cached In the users hard drive and can be viewed at user’s convenience
Consumers can download data from 32 to 128 KBPS speeds i.e. from 14 Mbytes to 56 Mbytes an hour.
Time sharing of Channel between user groups
Each Adapter Is addressed with a unique license file thus ensuring that relevant content is sent only to authorized subscriber
European MAESTRO S-DMB
Still in planning stage
MAESTRO stands for Mobile Applications
Services based on Satellite & Terrestrial inter working project
Alms to have close integration with 3G Mobile Networks
7 spot beams from high power Geo Stationary Satellite
IMT -2000 Mobile Satellite Band
Reception with hand held terminals
ISRO’s Multimedia Satellite Service (G SAT 6)
G SAT 6 to be launched around Dec. 2008 .Subscribers to be served by M/s DEVAS India
5 Regional spot beams
’S’ Band (2550 -2630 MHz) to be used

Is it possible to develop an application with only the Transponder without Spectrum? If not how much Spectrum is needed for application development? And how will the application developer benefit if competitors are allowed free play without development costs?

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