Interference is a growing problem in the satellite community — a key component of the I3 initiative is increasing SNG uplinking expertise through more training and certification. Since the launch in March 2009 of the I3 initiative, Intelsat has partnered with 14 satellite operators and a number of industry groups, as well as dozens of customers and equipment manufacturers, to make RFI mitigation a top priority and to strengthen quality-of-service standards for satellite communications worldwide. SlingPath is BeaconSeek’s competency-based online SNG training and certification program, which is used by companies such as Fox News, ABC News, Arqiva and others for its employees as well as by many individual freelance operators. Intelsat’s 3-year program will provide free online training for a number of its SNG and Occasional Use (OU) customers and offer everyone access to a negotiated group rate for operator certification courses. Intelsat’s goal is to have 1,200 global technicians and engineers trained by 2011.
The SlingPath course takes users from the absolute beginner to intermediate level, moving through the student through the basics of satellites, how they are used in newsgathering, the various key technical parameters and critical component parts of an SNG system, and how to work with satellites. The SlingPath presentation of the material is highly graphical, interactive, and user-friendly, with potentially complex subjects presented in a fashion that makes it approachable to even the most techno-phobic participants. In particular the program has been designed for those who are required to operate the latest generation of ‘auto-pointing’ SNG systems, which enable operatives with negligible training to access satellite capacity, but in doing so mask a significant amount of the technical aspects of the actions being undertaken. SlingPath has been assessed and endorsed by SUIRG (Satellite Users Interference Reduction Group) and WBU-ISOG (World Broadcasting Union – International Satellite Operations Group) as meeting their high standards for the training of operatives in SNG.