"Satellites Will Help India See Rapid Technology Growth"

align="right" border="5" hspace="3" vspace="3">

Leading satellite equipment

provider Scientific-Atlanta announced the combining of two of its three divisions, the

Satellite Networks division and the Communications & Tracking Systems division in

June. These divisions have been merged to strengthen the satellite business and expand

product lines. Barely three days after the company announced the re-organization along

with a few other major changes in the company’s operations, Raymond D Lucas,

the president of its satellite communications sector, spoke exclusively to Voice &

Data about what necessitated the change and the future strategies of the company.

Ray is the company’s chief

strategic officer responsible for business planning and new business development

activities. In 1991-92, he was president of network systems while continuing his strategic

planning responsibilities. Excerpts:

Bandwidth availability on satellites

is rising. Satellites are getting smarter with more and more onboard processing. The

merger of our two business units is a response to these global trends and also an attempt

to provide our customers with better integrated services and solutions.

Scientific-Atlanta has been in

the satellite business for 30 years. I believe there has been restructuring. Why is that

so?

Till recently, we had structured

our business as three separate divisions—Communications and Tracking Systems;

Satellite Networks; and Satellite Television Networks. Now, we are merging the

Communications and Tracking Systems and Satellite Networks.

Today, we do not think that it is

good enough to be either only a voice or a data communication company. What customers are

looking for is not just voice or data networks, but end-to-end communication systems. If

we look at our E-mail system, increasingly the size of the E-mail file/attachments is

becoming larger. It is very common to have a power point presentation or a video-clip

attached to these mails. So, it is not the computing power, but the communication

requirements which are driving the growth of the high-speed high-bandwidth LANs and WANs.

Hence, it is both the technology and market forces which are driving this merger.

What are the implications of this

merger world-wide?

The market is changing,

world-wide. Data rates are going up and costs are coming down in the satellite world.

Satellite has traditionally been seen as a high-cost WAN alternative. But this is

changing. Bandwidth availability on satellites is rising. We have low-cost satellite

dishes. Satellites are getting smarter with more and more onboard processing. We believe

that the merger of our two business units is a response to these global trends and also an

attempt to provide our customers with better integrated services and solutions. With the

merger of these two divisions, we have a much larger and diverse engineering team in-house

under one roof. We shall be able to provide our customers with the next generation of

architectures much faster.

alt="https://img-cdn.thepublive.com/filters:format(webp)/vnd/media/post_attachments/144f5ffb87fa7589a17dddd6ffe7a504f1544d00d5b58d754c5cbc1b8a9c0e66.jpg (9954 bytes)" align="left">What is

the implication of this on your India strategy?

India is a unique market. It has

a fairly advanced high-technology industry, but the basic telecommunication infrastructure

is lacking. With new communication technologies like fibre and wave division multiplexing,

we should see rapid technology growth in this country and we believe satellites will help

in leapfrogging.

Do you see the nuclear blasts as

a constraint to your India strategy?

Yes, the blasts will be a bit of

a constraint, though to what extent we do not really know at this point of time. The

Indian government is a big buyer and we do not know what effect sanctions will have on

them. We would like to wait and see. The nuclear blasts apart, the policy domain in India

is a bit constraining. For e.g., VSAT networks are not allowed to be connected to PSTN.

India is a big potential market for Internet services. Internet is also facing similar

access issues. We think that the policy should allow inter-connectivity.

What are the trends in the

satellite business from technology and geographic perspectives?

As far as geography is concerned,

the growth has been a world-wide phenomenon. The Latin American, European, and

Asia-Pacific markets have grown. The applications which drive individual markets may be

different. One of the major drivers in some markets has been digital television networks.

One clear observation is that transponder space world-wide has grown.

As I have said earlier, data

capacity is going up, bandwidth availability is increasing, and costs are coming down.

Larger constellations of satellite systems like Iridium are coming. I believe India is

participating in these. Organizations which are providing equipment and service will have

to be a part of the consortium. The media access protocols supporting these constellations

are proprietary. We have seen MEOs, LEOs, and now we are seeing Little LEOs.

What are Little LEOs and where

are they used?

Little LEOs support low data

rates and allow for the usage of low-cost terminal-end equipment. The satellite dishes

here cost a few hundred dollars versus the traditional VSAT dishes that cost a few

thousand dollars. Little LEOs could be used for telemetry, for tracking assets, rail cars,

trucks, and so on. It could find applications in the oil, power, and the transportation

sectors to name a few. We believe that this could be a whole new market opportunity for

India.