VSAT - Streaming from Muddy Fields, and other Fibreless Locations
Contributed by Jon Gilbert
When
an event location is selected, the main criteria for selection often
doesn't consider how many Mbps of terrestrial connectivity exist for
a production's Live Webast. This is probably a good thing, or
Glastonbury would be held at the NEC and called Birmingham.
Sometimes,
there simply isn't the time to pull in fibre where it didn't previously lie,
and other times, there simply isn't the budget to pay "Non-Descript
British Telecommunications Company Notorious for Missing Lead Times by
Massively Unfunny Margins" or whoever, what they might require to run
fibre from the nearest exchange. In
these instances, VSAT represents a valuable tool.
Ten
years ago, VSAT systems were decidedly un-user-friendly devices with indoor
electronics that filled two 19" racks and which needed to be aligned
with hardware costing £7,000.00. The VSAT system itself might only have cost
you £5k. Allocated to this would typically be a heavily contended, 256 Kbps up
/ 512 Kbps down allocation, and it might have cost you the Earth.
Today,
technological evolution has done its work and a market-leading VSAT system
(inclusive of virtual pointing software to run on your MAC or PC) can now be
acquired for sub £2k, or rented for a fraction of this.
In
terms of bandwidth, where an olde-world contended data account would do
you no more good than a modern-day 3G card in a poor-signal area, VSAT
systems can be provisioned with dedicated uplink capacity set in an increment
to match a Webcast's data rate. Dedicated capacity can now be purchased in
increments from the week down to the hour, typically in chunks of 512 Kbps up
to 3072 Kbps.
When
choosing a service provider, be sure to ask the key questions on contention.
Although some forward-thinking companies understood long ago that VSAT should
be a tool geared for Webcast and Broadcast, and designed uncontended packages
accordingly, some providers are still in ADSL land and this will do the
Webcaster very little good. Also, not all IP satellite platforms were created
equal. Some were designed for transactional data, and some Hub Operators are
more Radio or RF conscious than IP conscious, meaning the IP backhaul from
the Hub can be, generously put, not up to supporting a Live
Transmission. Some Operators implement horrendous, cost-saving peering
arrangements with terrestrial backhaul providers, meaning that while the feed
is good from the dish to the Hub, from the Hub to the publishing
point, IP routes can be changed indiscriminately.
Unsurprisingly, the effect this has on a Live is disastrous.
Provenance is
important when selecting a service provider. My best advice would be, take
an encoder to any prospective VSAT Operator for a test. If they're up to
the Operational demands of an active Live client-base, they'll be able to
provide a dem without hesitation and usually FOC. If they don't agree to a dem,
why not? Perhaps they're reselling someone else's badged, contended account,
or don't have direct Hub access and have to defer to another company's Admin
Department to implement an IP address change which might require
the Completion of Forms in Triplicate to be FAXED for Validation
which might take three days.. not what you want in a Live environment.
As
a cost guideline, a typical London-based event including hardware,
installation and 512 Kbps of dedicated uplink capacity for a full day should
cost around £1k.
Even
as someone working within the VSAT industry, my advice is always,
"wherever possible, get cable". Although VSAT performance from the
right provider is excellent, with many advantages over the provisioning of
cable (installation time, availability, transportability, versatility of
config, versatility of deployment duration bringing real-terms economy), Space
Segment is still an expensive commodity next to wire. With each Satellite
Launch costing £250M, this is unavoidable. But where cable is a no go, or for a
vehicle-mounted solution that goes where the gig goes, VSAT comes into its own.
