Optus is set to boost its satellite capacity over Australia by a third with the announcement that a new bird will launch in mid-August. The Optus D3 satellite has been in production several years and will finally launch from Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana next month – with Optus already planning for new HDTV services and a possible NBN role.

Optus’ satellite division is worth some $250m a year in revenues, and Optus wholesale and satellite managing director Vicki Brady told CommsDay the new capacity is likely to quickly be devoured by new bandwidth-hungry services. “The exciting thing, I think, about D3 is it will actually increase the capacity on our satellite network above Australia by 30%,” she said. “A big driver of growth is high-definition TV services – so customers like Foxtel, and Sky New Zealand [who are] rolling out further and further high-definition TV need that increased capacity.”

Optus’ fleet is also likely to play a role as the country gradually switches from analogue to digital TV broadcasting – with satellite the most flexible solution to carry signals to far-flung regions. “In any sort of digital switchover there will be black spots within the coverage area for digital TV, so satellite plays an important role in so many part of Australia just due to our geography and out sparse population,” Brady said. “We’ve been working closely with the government, the government’s been formulating their options and plans – there’s been no decisions announced yet but certainly we’ve been engaged.”

The carrier already provides V-sat services to offer broadband data connectivity over its Ku band satellites, but for high speed broadband in remote areas Brady said new Ka Band satellites would be needed in the long term. “There’s no doubt Ka Band operates at a higher frequency so it certainly delivers high speeds basically at a lower cost per bit, so if you’re looking for a really big broadband solution then you’d probably go the Ka Band route. There isn’t Ka Band capacity over Australia at the moment, so if that’s the way NBN goes then there’s got to be at least one new satellite, if not more depending on what the forecast capacity is – but in the interim, our satellites do provide V-Sat broadband services.”

ADDITIONAL SATELLITE BOOST: Meanwhile, US telecom firm Globalstar has completed a financing deal worth A$912m which will see it upgrade its satellite network and ground facilities. Globalstar services are marketed in Australia by Pivotel, with MD Peter Bolger saying the upgrades will open up new satellite broadband services across Australia. The company has three Australian gateways in Dubbo, NSW, Mt Isa in QLD and Meekatharra in WA, and Bolger said the upgrade will unlock new services including push to talk and multicasting, MMS, mobile video applications, geo-location services, multiband and multi-mode handsets, and data devices with GPS integration.

Luke Coleman