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Space technologies and media distribution
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Acta Astronautica 54 (2004) 817 – 820 www.elsevier.com/locate/actaastro
Space technologies and media distribution Rob Bednarek 1. Introduction Ed asked me to comment from the perspective of a user of satellite technology, and my remarks are focused from the outlook of being the world’s largest commercial satellite operator. Geosynchronous communication satellites are used primarily for the distribution of media, and I chose those words carefully. You will hear me come back to that topic a number of times. First, some key references to put things into context. Who is our customer? Our customer is not really an end user of data or video or entertainment. That’s the end user. Our customer is a media company or a content creator who wishes to distribute content to these end users. The principal tools that we use to a4ect the job are spectrum, a key ingredient to the broadcast community, and space technology, which is the focus of our discussion here today. Before I continue, I would like to mention another key element. We believe we are at a real point of transformation in the space communications arena. There has been a great deal of development in technology, particularly storage technology and display technology along with coding techniques, and frankly, the system and the delivery mechanism in the networks, in our opinion, have not quite caught up to the technology. This is an interesting perspective—often times it is the other way around. 2. Where is our future market? Where is our future market (Fig. 1)? We really see two broad areas. The 8rst continues to be video broadcasting. That’s the dominant tra9c—70 –80% of the tra9c is still video—largely one-way distribution. c 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd. 0094-5765/$ - see front matter doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2004.01.027
There are some changes occurring in that. It is slowing, but actually what is slowing is broadcasting in a continuous linear form, where you are fed a constant stream of information. You will hear me talk later about some options that are beginning to exist there. Broadband is a rapidly growing 8eld. I actually don’t like the word Broadband, because it is very imprecise. It means lots of things to lots of di4erent people. But generally, for the purpose of this discussion, consider broadband to be a 384 kbit=s or faster bi-directional link to and from an end user. The reason I chose that number is that there are quite a few studies that show that a reasonable amount of video information can be conveyed over a link at such a speed. And there is strong evidence to show that one of the principal users of broadband is the delivery of video. 3. Some new services As we look forward into the future, what are some new services that are on the horizon (Fig. 2)? One is business and residential broadband access, connecting businesses and users in a broadband 384 kbit or higher circuit. One is video on demand, which I will talk about in a second. Another is interactive television—the ability to have some mode of conversation or some mode of choice with the video material that you are seeing. Last but not the least, navigation and communication synergy, which is, I think a very untapped 8eld. In what follows I will discuss each of these points. 4. Broadband access by satellite First, I would like to discuss broadband access via satellite. A lot has been made of this.
818
R. Bednarek / Acta Astronautica 54 (2004) 817 – 820
Fig. 1. Where is our future market?
to describe the situation. Some of these are true, and you could say they are even current wisdom, but all can be challenged. There is a well-demonstrated market demand throughout the world for two-way broadband services. Terrestrial technologies work well, and satellites are not necessarily competitive to those; they are complementary, because both of the dominant terrestrial technologies have key penetration issues. And, as I mentioned already, there is a strong correlation between video and broadband take-up. If you have advanced video in your home, you are likely to use broadband. If you have broadband, you are likely to use it for certain types of video activity. 5. Video on demand
Fig. 2. Some new services.
Now let’s move to video on demand (Fig. 4). Video on demand is a method of getting video in a non-24×7 constant stream. What you have here is some evidence in the public that shows that this is how end users, be it in the home or be it in business, want to be entertained or want to get information, and the Internet is probably the most powerful demonstrator of that. We’ve all had Internet experiences. We know how we can get information. We know where to cruise for information. It is on our time and it is in our particular 8eld of interest. Storage costs at all network levels have changed the game. If you think back 20 years, broadcasting existed in part because there was no way to save the material. You had to watch when it was available. The advent of storage throughout the networks now has changed
Fig. 3. Broadband access by satellite.
We have had the Teledesics, and other LEO satellites. There were various statements made regarding the possibility of GEOs providing two-way broadband, and you see in Fig. 3 quotes that are often used
Fig. 4. Video on demand.
R. Bednarek / Acta Astronautica 54 (2004) 817 – 820
the notion of time, and changed the bandwidth–time equation. The emerging job of communications and video distribution providers is to 8ll storage devices, not necessarily to operate just bandwidth. And this leads to what I think is a fundamental challenge facing the industry as we go forward, which is really about information management. If you have a server universe of 8fty million servers, so that everybody has a set-top storage unit, how do you keep these synchronized? How do you manage the information on these? How do you select and present information of interest to the consumers? I believe the real keys as we go forward are the software systems. 6. Communications/navigation synergy Now consider communications and navigation synergy (Fig. 5). Everyone here is quite familiar with the GPS-Galileo proposals and the present GPS system. I consider satellite navigation to be one of the most phenomenal developments in the industry. If you really look at the cost–bene8t to the end user, it is very favorable. Ubiquity is a key feature, which is a key feature of satellites. But many interesting services are only now being derived, and can be derived, from sharing the location knowledge with others. You may look now at GPS as primarily giving you location knowledge, but if you think of GPS and Galileo providing location knowledge to others, with your authorization of course, there are lots of possibilities that begin to emerge. Targeted advertising coming from the broadcasters, directed messaging, interactive logistics
Fig. 5. Communications/navigation synergy.
819
such as we’re beginning to see with trucking, and other similar applications. 7. Interactive television I would also like to just touch brieIy on interactive television (Fig. 6). I mentioned interactivity and the Internet earlier. The key words here are choice, convenience, responsiveness, and participation. That is what end users want to see. The media community views this as a way of retaining an audience. There is ample evidence of interest in such services. In Europe, for example, recently there is a television program called “Big Brother.” One of the episodes generated more than a million SMS messages—these are short 10 or 15 byte messages—for voting regarding something that was on the show. There is a core technology to embrace this interactivity, but it really ought not to be on mobile telephony. It can be via satellite. A lot of development work has been done in low-cost transmission paths back to satellites. But really we need to do some more development work in low-cost low duty-cycle always on type of returns links. 8. What do we need from industry Now that I have touched on the services that will be the drivers in our 8eld in the future, what do we need from industry?
Fig. 6. Interactive television.
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R. Bednarek / Acta Astronautica 54 (2004) 817 – 820
Fig. 8. What do we need from industry (2=2). Fig. 7. What do we need from industry (1=2).
The 8rst is that we need advanced satellites (Fig. 7), with some key features: • Greater frequency re-use: The spectrum is a very limited asset and our need for spectrum is directly related to the tra9c. A high level of frequency re-use with spot beams is essential. • In-orbit recon&guration: A 15-year satellite is great, but markets don’t tend to stay in one place for 15 years. There is a strong need to be able to move assets in space to recon8gure capacity from one market to another, and right now it tends to be limited, at least in the commercial 8eld, to wave guide switches. • There has been a lot of great work in adaptive rain-fade compensation techniques, and these now need to be incorporated in technology that is price competitive. Price competitivity is really my next point (Fig. 7). We believe low cost, feature rich terminals are the key to the future of the satellite communications business. You have only to look at the success of direct-to-home television. You read every day here in the United States of the merger talks between Echostar and Direct TV. It is fascinating that they have together reached more than 15+ million subscribers in the US. This has all been made possible by a device, a DVB receiver containing a modem. Even 15 years ago, this type of
modem was a 10,000 –15,000 dollar part. Now the cost has been reduced to the point where it is a4ordable by practically everybody. I think its essential that we follow that same kind of decreasing price curve on terminals for future two-way services. What else do we need from the industry (Fig. 8)? We need distributed content management systems. It is not enough just to have the physical path now; we need to manage the information Iowing through those paths on behalf of our customers. We need to track the program and content elements, we need to be able to report back who uses them where, and how they are Iowing through the system. Our job will be to make sure that material is in front of the end users, by using our physical technology, the satellites, but in a way that is most e4ective for our customers. This really calls for good systems engineering. We need the engineering talent to put all of these pieces together. One of the di9culties faced by this industry is that we have lots of pieces of technology, we have great transmission technology, we have reception technology, and we have space technology. Together, we need to pull that into an operating system and o4er it to an end customer. You certainly can see the results and the bene8ts that Iow from that. That summarizes my very top-level overview from the media side of the communications world, where we see things going, and some of the key technologies and key trends.
Acta Astronautica 54 (2004) 817 – 820 www.elsevier.com/locate/actaastro
Space technologies and media distribution Rob Bednarek 1. Introduction Ed asked me to comment from the perspective of a user of satellite technology, and my remarks are focused from the outlook of being the world’s largest commercial satellite operator. Geosynchronous communication satellites are used primarily for the distribution of media, and I chose those words carefully. You will hear me come back to that topic a number of times. First, some key references to put things into context. Who is our customer? Our customer is not really an end user of data or video or entertainment. That’s the end user. Our customer is a media company or a content creator who wishes to distribute content to these end users. The principal tools that we use to a4ect the job are spectrum, a key ingredient to the broadcast community, and space technology, which is the focus of our discussion here today. Before I continue, I would like to mention another key element. We believe we are at a real point of transformation in the space communications arena. There has been a great deal of development in technology, particularly storage technology and display technology along with coding techniques, and frankly, the system and the delivery mechanism in the networks, in our opinion, have not quite caught up to the technology. This is an interesting perspective—often times it is the other way around. 2. Where is our future market? Where is our future market (Fig. 1)? We really see two broad areas. The 8rst continues to be video broadcasting. That’s the dominant tra9c—70 –80% of the tra9c is still video—largely one-way distribution. c 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd. 0094-5765/$ - see front matter doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2004.01.027
There are some changes occurring in that. It is slowing, but actually what is slowing is broadcasting in a continuous linear form, where you are fed a constant stream of information. You will hear me talk later about some options that are beginning to exist there. Broadband is a rapidly growing 8eld. I actually don’t like the word Broadband, because it is very imprecise. It means lots of things to lots of di4erent people. But generally, for the purpose of this discussion, consider broadband to be a 384 kbit=s or faster bi-directional link to and from an end user. The reason I chose that number is that there are quite a few studies that show that a reasonable amount of video information can be conveyed over a link at such a speed. And there is strong evidence to show that one of the principal users of broadband is the delivery of video. 3. Some new services As we look forward into the future, what are some new services that are on the horizon (Fig. 2)? One is business and residential broadband access, connecting businesses and users in a broadband 384 kbit or higher circuit. One is video on demand, which I will talk about in a second. Another is interactive television—the ability to have some mode of conversation or some mode of choice with the video material that you are seeing. Last but not the least, navigation and communication synergy, which is, I think a very untapped 8eld. In what follows I will discuss each of these points. 4. Broadband access by satellite First, I would like to discuss broadband access via satellite. A lot has been made of this.
818
R. Bednarek / Acta Astronautica 54 (2004) 817 – 820
Fig. 1. Where is our future market?
to describe the situation. Some of these are true, and you could say they are even current wisdom, but all can be challenged. There is a well-demonstrated market demand throughout the world for two-way broadband services. Terrestrial technologies work well, and satellites are not necessarily competitive to those; they are complementary, because both of the dominant terrestrial technologies have key penetration issues. And, as I mentioned already, there is a strong correlation between video and broadband take-up. If you have advanced video in your home, you are likely to use broadband. If you have broadband, you are likely to use it for certain types of video activity. 5. Video on demand
Fig. 2. Some new services.
Now let’s move to video on demand (Fig. 4). Video on demand is a method of getting video in a non-24×7 constant stream. What you have here is some evidence in the public that shows that this is how end users, be it in the home or be it in business, want to be entertained or want to get information, and the Internet is probably the most powerful demonstrator of that. We’ve all had Internet experiences. We know how we can get information. We know where to cruise for information. It is on our time and it is in our particular 8eld of interest. Storage costs at all network levels have changed the game. If you think back 20 years, broadcasting existed in part because there was no way to save the material. You had to watch when it was available. The advent of storage throughout the networks now has changed
Fig. 3. Broadband access by satellite.
We have had the Teledesics, and other LEO satellites. There were various statements made regarding the possibility of GEOs providing two-way broadband, and you see in Fig. 3 quotes that are often used
Fig. 4. Video on demand.
R. Bednarek / Acta Astronautica 54 (2004) 817 – 820
the notion of time, and changed the bandwidth–time equation. The emerging job of communications and video distribution providers is to 8ll storage devices, not necessarily to operate just bandwidth. And this leads to what I think is a fundamental challenge facing the industry as we go forward, which is really about information management. If you have a server universe of 8fty million servers, so that everybody has a set-top storage unit, how do you keep these synchronized? How do you manage the information on these? How do you select and present information of interest to the consumers? I believe the real keys as we go forward are the software systems. 6. Communications/navigation synergy Now consider communications and navigation synergy (Fig. 5). Everyone here is quite familiar with the GPS-Galileo proposals and the present GPS system. I consider satellite navigation to be one of the most phenomenal developments in the industry. If you really look at the cost–bene8t to the end user, it is very favorable. Ubiquity is a key feature, which is a key feature of satellites. But many interesting services are only now being derived, and can be derived, from sharing the location knowledge with others. You may look now at GPS as primarily giving you location knowledge, but if you think of GPS and Galileo providing location knowledge to others, with your authorization of course, there are lots of possibilities that begin to emerge. Targeted advertising coming from the broadcasters, directed messaging, interactive logistics
Fig. 5. Communications/navigation synergy.
819
such as we’re beginning to see with trucking, and other similar applications. 7. Interactive television I would also like to just touch brieIy on interactive television (Fig. 6). I mentioned interactivity and the Internet earlier. The key words here are choice, convenience, responsiveness, and participation. That is what end users want to see. The media community views this as a way of retaining an audience. There is ample evidence of interest in such services. In Europe, for example, recently there is a television program called “Big Brother.” One of the episodes generated more than a million SMS messages—these are short 10 or 15 byte messages—for voting regarding something that was on the show. There is a core technology to embrace this interactivity, but it really ought not to be on mobile telephony. It can be via satellite. A lot of development work has been done in low-cost transmission paths back to satellites. But really we need to do some more development work in low-cost low duty-cycle always on type of returns links. 8. What do we need from industry Now that I have touched on the services that will be the drivers in our 8eld in the future, what do we need from industry?
Fig. 6. Interactive television.
820
R. Bednarek / Acta Astronautica 54 (2004) 817 – 820
Fig. 8. What do we need from industry (2=2). Fig. 7. What do we need from industry (1=2).
The 8rst is that we need advanced satellites (Fig. 7), with some key features: • Greater frequency re-use: The spectrum is a very limited asset and our need for spectrum is directly related to the tra9c. A high level of frequency re-use with spot beams is essential. • In-orbit recon&guration: A 15-year satellite is great, but markets don’t tend to stay in one place for 15 years. There is a strong need to be able to move assets in space to recon8gure capacity from one market to another, and right now it tends to be limited, at least in the commercial 8eld, to wave guide switches. • There has been a lot of great work in adaptive rain-fade compensation techniques, and these now need to be incorporated in technology that is price competitive. Price competitivity is really my next point (Fig. 7). We believe low cost, feature rich terminals are the key to the future of the satellite communications business. You have only to look at the success of direct-to-home television. You read every day here in the United States of the merger talks between Echostar and Direct TV. It is fascinating that they have together reached more than 15+ million subscribers in the US. This has all been made possible by a device, a DVB receiver containing a modem. Even 15 years ago, this type of
modem was a 10,000 –15,000 dollar part. Now the cost has been reduced to the point where it is a4ordable by practically everybody. I think its essential that we follow that same kind of decreasing price curve on terminals for future two-way services. What else do we need from the industry (Fig. 8)? We need distributed content management systems. It is not enough just to have the physical path now; we need to manage the information Iowing through those paths on behalf of our customers. We need to track the program and content elements, we need to be able to report back who uses them where, and how they are Iowing through the system. Our job will be to make sure that material is in front of the end users, by using our physical technology, the satellites, but in a way that is most e4ective for our customers. This really calls for good systems engineering. We need the engineering talent to put all of these pieces together. One of the di9culties faced by this industry is that we have lots of pieces of technology, we have great transmission technology, we have reception technology, and we have space technology. Together, we need to pull that into an operating system and o4er it to an end customer. You certainly can see the results and the bene8ts that Iow from that. That summarizes my very top-level overview from the media side of the communications world, where we see things going, and some of the key technologies and key trends.