WildBlue - Broadband Internet Access for Residential and Small Office/Home Office (SurfBeam® DOCSIS)WildBlue - Broadband Internet Access for Residential and Small Office/Home Office (SurfBeam® DOCSIS)
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- WildBlue Broadband Services
WildBlue, the first next-generation Ka-band satellite broadband system, is the fastest growing broadband service in the world
WildBlue's initial target for its affordable two-way broadband services is residential and small office/home office customers throughout the contiguous United States. WildBlue's strategic investors include Liberty Media Corporation, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Arianespace, the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative, and Intelsat. The spot beam satellite technology and ground system design of WildBlue is lowering the cost of providing high speed Internet access via satellite. Since its roll out in mid-2005, subscriptions have quickly grown to more than 350,000.
WildBlue is especially appealing to the 10 to 15 million U.S. homes that do not have access to DSL or cable modem service.
Spot beam satellites focus multiple beams of satellite power onto different geographic regions, similar to the cells of a wireless phone network. According to WildBlue this technology produces an increase of four to six times the capacity of conventional Ku-band satellites that have one large "footprint," generally covering an area slightly larger than the continental US. Of course with higher system capacity WildBlue can offer lower cost airtime for users. WildBlue service launched using Ka-band transponders on the Telesat Anik F2 satellite. Then in March 2007, WildBlue put its own satellite, WildBlue-1, into service. As the first full Ka-band spot beam commercial satellite, WildBlue-1 immediately tripled the capacity of the network.
DOCSIS for Satellite
Perhaps as important as choosing spot-beam technology is another aspect of WildBlue's strategy, which is building a satellite system based on the cable industry's well-established Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS®). Using DOCSIS for satellite, WildBlue taps into proven broadband technology, including mass produced chipsets, a variety of scalable hub hardware, and mature back office systems. This tremendous savings in development time and costs has further reduced the cost of subscriber services.
To adapt the system to satellite, WildBlue chose ViaSat as its technology partner. ViaSat engineered both a satellite modem and the satellite modem termination system (SMTS), or "headend" of the network. ViaSat wholly owned subsidiary US Monolithics has also contributed key technology to WildBlue.
The satellite modem, similar in size and function to DSL or cable modems, converts the analog data transmissions into Internet Protocol (IP) data packets, which can be read by subscriber PCs or any digital Internet appliance. ViaSat is enabling WildBlue to leverage standard components from DOCSIS, as well as the satellite TV industry, while ensuring the design provides excellent performance over the Ka-band satellite link.
The SMTS serves same purpose as a cable modem termination system. Located at each WildBlue gateway location, the ViaSat SMTS provides the interface between the terrestrial internet backbone and WildBlue subscribers. The SMTS controls the satellite network, acts as an IP router/switch to communicate with and manage the traffic for each subscriber satellite terminal, and performs authentication and encryption for subscribers. Six gateways are located in San Diego, CA; Cheyenne, WY; Laredo, TX; Syracuse, NY; Duluth, MN, and Seattle, WA.
New Outdoor RF Products Too
US Monolithics is the exclusive supplier of outdoor satellite transceiver electronics, in the form of a 3-watt linear output power transceiver operating at transmit frequencies of 29.5 to 30.0 GHz and receive frequencies of 19.7 to 20.2 GHz, integrated into a single, compact package. As with the other system components, this low-cost transceiver is another key to transforming the economics of satellite broadband and enabling the WildBlue business model to succeed.