Galaxy Broadband to offer Ka-band network in central, eastern Canada

Good news for Canadians who reside in the Central and Eastern part of the country. Satellite communications company Galaxy Broadband recently announced that it is planning to introduce a new Ka-band beam using its SkyDATA Enterprise class service. Regions included are Northern Ontario, Northern Quebec and the western areas of Labrador and Newfoundland.

Scheduled for an April 15 launch, the new service will use Telesat’s Ka-band spot beam on Anik F3. The Canadian company initially launched its Ka-band SkyDATA platform in 2012 using four Ka-beams to offer service on the Western half of Northern Canada, and now are aiming to extend its service to Eastern Canada.

Rick Hodgkinson, Galaxy Broadband founder, CEO and president noted, “We offer a truly world class managed service on a reliable yet cost effective platform. Our customers are seeking more and more bandwidth to support mission critical applications, morale services to work camps and reliable quality VoIP communications. The additional Ka-spot beam will expand our coverage area to the resource rich areas of Eastern Canada. We have shown the market that our SkyDATA Managed Ka- service is both reliable and cost effective. Leveraging the cost efficiencies of Ka- with some really interesting technology, we deliver to our customers a fast, predictable service for an affordable price.”

CPI gets $6M for Ka-band satcom amplifiers order

Communications and Power Industries (CPI), the biggest electron devices manufacturer and rebuilder in the U.S., announced that it has won a new order for Ka-band high-power satcom amplifiers for a staggering $6 million. The company said that an international customer will make use of the amplifiers for gateway Earth stations to support high-throughput satellite (HTS) services.

In a company statement, CPI SAtcom Division president Andy Tafler said: “CPI’s high-power satcom amplifiers will support our end customer in providing high-capacity Internet service to a rural population, supplementing the customer’s fiber network.”

The California-based company will manufacture the 500-watt Ka-band travelling wave tube amplifiers (TWTAs), with shipments expected to go on until middle of next year.

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ViaSat passes FAA, International Certification for Ka-band mobile satellite system

ViaSat has a good reason to celebrate as its VR-12 Ka-band satellite antenna system successfully passed the industry standard DO-160G testing, meeting FAA and international regulations for electrical equipment integrated on commercial aircraft. The standard is applicable to all aircraft, from business and commercial jets, helicopters and general aviation, to civilian aircraft altered for government use.

Along with ViaSat’s mobile satellite modem, the VR-12 Ka-band antenna system delivers high data rates and Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS) airborne satellite communications for bandwidth intensive applications. These include military intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) over commercial and military Ka-band frequencies. Results of an earlier flight test included successful simultaneous transmission of high-definition video, video teleconferencing, VoIP applications, as well as Internet at aircraft-to-satellite transmission rates of up to 10 Mbps.

In a company statement, ViaSat Global Mobile Broadband Systems Vice President and General Manager Paul Baca said: “We designed the VR-12 Ka system to be a form and fit interchange with its Ku-band counterpart [VR-12 Ku]. Customer experience has shown that an antenna swap is possible with a simple flight line maintenance action, allowing for a very quick adaptation of the aircraft BLOS communications capabilities to meet the mission requirements.”

The next couple of weeks will see the shipment of ViaSat’s VR-12 Ka-band satellite antenna system.

Enterprise and military sectors turning to Ka Band

As the C and Ku band spectrum faces saturation, the enterprise and military sectors are slowly turning to Ka band for their satellite capacity especially as demand continues to increase. The surge in the number of businesses and defence organizations relying on satellite technology has also been a result of increased data traffic. New devices such as smartphones and mobile tablets run on bandwidth-intensive applications which traditional terrestrial networks cannot handle all at the same time. Military organizations, on the other hand, are becoming more keen into using satellite for mission critical communications, especially in regions of conflict where ground networks are easily damaged by insurgent attacks, bombings, and the like.

Sample of a ka band satellite

With that, enterprise customers as well as military and government sectors are aware they need to upgrade their satellite communications capabilities, and they see Ka band as the logical step forward. With the spectrum now open to commercial endeavors, customers can take advantage of the increased capacity offered by Ka band. This means they can run more applications, provided increased amounts of bandwidth, and uplink to more reliable communications network necessary for various operations. In fact, the new generation of Ka band satellites being launched across the globe can support the increased volume of traffic, and therefore serves as a platform for services like internet from satellite, VoIP, wireless backhaul solutions, and data and telemetry.