John
12-27-2010, 10:28 AM
The second European satellite dedicated to delivering broadband internet connections has launched successfully.
The six-tonne Ka-Sat lifted off atop a Proton rocket from Baikonur in Kazakhstan at 0351 local time on Monday (2151 GMT on Sunday).
The flight lasted nine hours and 12 minutes.
The Eutelsat-operated spacecraft will concentrate its services on the estimated tens of millions of European homes in so-called "not-spots".
These are places where consumers cannot get a decent terrestrial connection.
The spacecraft follows the Hylas-1 platform into orbit. This satellite, operated by Avanti Communications of London, was launched just last month.
Ka-Sat, however, is considerably bigger, and has a notional capacity to serve up to two million households compared with Hylas's 300,000.
Nevertheless, such is the scale of the under-served market in Europe that both platforms should be very profitable ventures, the two companies believe.
"As many as 30 million households in Europe are not served at all or get high mediocrity of service," said Eutelsat CEO Michel de Rosen.
"These could be people in the countryside or in the mountains, sometimes not very far from large cities. Ka-Sat is an answer to that problem," he told BBC News.
Paris-based Eutelsat is one of the world's big three Fixed Satellite Services (FSS) companies, and transmits thousands of TV channels across its fleet of spacecraft.
It already provides some internet capability on its existing platforms, but Ka-Sat is its first broadband-dedicated endeavour.
Source - BBC.
The six-tonne Ka-Sat lifted off atop a Proton rocket from Baikonur in Kazakhstan at 0351 local time on Monday (2151 GMT on Sunday).
The flight lasted nine hours and 12 minutes.
The Eutelsat-operated spacecraft will concentrate its services on the estimated tens of millions of European homes in so-called "not-spots".
These are places where consumers cannot get a decent terrestrial connection.
The spacecraft follows the Hylas-1 platform into orbit. This satellite, operated by Avanti Communications of London, was launched just last month.
Ka-Sat, however, is considerably bigger, and has a notional capacity to serve up to two million households compared with Hylas's 300,000.
Nevertheless, such is the scale of the under-served market in Europe that both platforms should be very profitable ventures, the two companies believe.
"As many as 30 million households in Europe are not served at all or get high mediocrity of service," said Eutelsat CEO Michel de Rosen.
"These could be people in the countryside or in the mountains, sometimes not very far from large cities. Ka-Sat is an answer to that problem," he told BBC News.
Paris-based Eutelsat is one of the world's big three Fixed Satellite Services (FSS) companies, and transmits thousands of TV channels across its fleet of spacecraft.
It already provides some internet capability on its existing platforms, but Ka-Sat is its first broadband-dedicated endeavour.
Source - BBC.