As one of the world's preeminent satellite communications companies, Intelsat connects people and businesses everywhere, affordably and reliably. With its global fleet of 21 satellites, Intelsat offers Internet, video broadcast, telephony, and corporate networking to leading service providers in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. One new offering from Intelsat is an advanced bandwidth-on-demand service called Broadband VSAT (or BVSAT). The network offers flexible and cost-effective high speed networking for wideband data, voice, video, and Internet traffic. The new service is implemented using LinkWay VSATs from ViaSat.

Intelsat has established gateways in each of four major regions: Europe/Middle East, Africa, the Americas, and the Asia-Pacific. Using Intelsat 801, 804, 901, and APR2 satellites, on both Ku-band and C-band frequencies, BVSAT takes full advantage of the following LinkWay attributes:

• Mixed beam mode
• Multi-transponder operation
• IP, FR, ATM, ISDN
• Bandwidth-on-demand
• User groups with unique Service Level Agreement

Star, Mesh and Hybrid Topologies

According to Intelsat, a company in Latin America has implemented BVSAT for a Virtual Private Network with 30 sites using Frame Relay for voice, data, and video conferencing. By upgrading to Broadband VSAT, the company saved 50% in space segment costs and the savings paid for the equipment in just four months.

The advantages of using LinkWay VSATs as a broadband system for global services include:

• Dynamic bandwidth assignment on-demand
• Multiple carriers and data rates
• Efficient error correction schemes that reduce space segment cost and earth station size
• Multiple topologies and protocols on a single platform
• Full IP routing with QoS and multicasting

By using an advanced system that coordinates multiple transmissions and frequencies, the LinkWay system enables each terminal to use a range of satellite bandwidth over multiple transponders to boost system throughput. All LinkWay 2100 broadband VSATs have access to all channels in the network, so mesh, star, and hybrid network topologies are available from a single platform. The topology flexibility gives remotes within a region the ability to connect directly to one another in a mesh configuration, but also receive efficient multicasts from other regions or a home office. Automatic, adaptive bandwidth assignment and advanced coding provides substantial transponder cost savings.

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