[LINK] Gillard announced a $620 million deal for two NBN broadband satellites.

[TKoltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Jan Whitaker
> Sent: Wednesday, 8 February 2012 10:48 PM
> To: link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [LINK] Gillard announced a $620 million deal for 
> two NBN broadband satellites.
> 
> 
> At 10:21 PM 8/02/2012, TKoltai wrote:
> 
> >I would really like the Prime Minister to tell us why the contract 
> >couldn't go to an Australian Firm. Especially one that is 
> listed on the 
> >ASX, has predominantly Australian shareholders and would 
> have provided 
> >additional Australian jobs.
> 
> That was my thought as I read through search results. Newsat is 
> selling birds to everywhere else but here, it seems. So why aren't we 
> buying these local?

Err, my fault, we don't actually build Satellites anymore. The last one
was in the 70's http://www.asri.org.au/web/satellites/wresat
Newsat buy then from other people, just as Leighton's/Nextgen would.

However we should. Technology transfer should be part of any technology
contract worth 620 million.

An actual satellite in Geosynchronous orbit is worth around 30 million
dollars plus extras.
At around 280 million each, that's a lot of extras. Surely there's some
technology transfer costs in there somewhere.

> Coverage is a different issue. There are lots of birds up there, but 
> capacity may not be in play, as someone else pointed out, for 
> the cost/speed.
> 
> What caught my attention was the rain effect. K-band isn't too good 
> in the rain. C band is ideal for heavy rain locations. ( 
> http://www.satsig.net/ ) But the dishes are much bigger (which is why 
> they are better in the rain - more signal collection). So think about 
> the wet/dry seasons where some of this sparse population is located 
> up north (Tom will know about this). I didn't know about the night 
> performance issues.
> 
Correct for an MPEG television repeated signal, not necessarily correct
for new beam formed high frequency data streams. 

Pages 17 to 10 of
http://www.aprsaf.org/data/aprsaf17_data/Day1-csa_1350_M1_SUZUKI.pdf
refer.
Result negligible signal loss.


Tom