Hughes Network Systems announced this week it successfully activated the first HughesNet customer subscriber for broadband Internet service using the SPACEWAY 3 Ka-band satellite. SPACEWAY 3 has a gross capacity of 10 gigabits per second, which Hughes claims makes it the “highest traffic-carrying satellite to be brought into service in North America.”
Pradman Kaul, president and CEO of Hughes, commented, “With this significant milestone, our SPACEWAY 3 satellite has officially commenced carrying revenue-bearing traffic, making Hughes a fully integrated service provider. We are excited to begin delivering HughesNet broadband services over the world’s first commercial satellite with on-board switching to our rapidly growing base of consumer, SMB, enterprise and government customers throughout North America.”
In addition to on-board traffic switching and routing, SPACEWAY 3 employs advanced technologies such as dynamic beam forming and direct small-dish-to-small-dish connectivity.
Depending on pricing, SPACEWAY 3 could provide an inexpensive way to feed high quality IP-based video and audio from remote locations at higher data rates than lower frequency portable satellite communications systems, such as BGAN, without the need for large earth station antennas.
