...Ka-band and High Throughput Satellites (HTS). It wrapped up last week in London and the consensus was that the satellite industry is going through a series of innovations that will lead to satellite becoming a mainstream connectivity offering. The group of nearly 100 people listened to several roundtable sessions in regards to the emergence of HTS and, specifically, Ka-band. Discussions focused on:

• Is there user demand?
• Do we have the technology innovations to meet the demand?
• Are we able meet the user needs of higher bandwidth, lower cost and ease of use to truly enable mass adoption?
• Are the ground segment innovations matching the space segment innovations with new HTS on the way?
• Is Ka-band really a viable option given the issues with spectrum and rain fade?

Throughout the three days of presentations and discussion, the common response to the questions was a resounding, “Yes!”

Bottom line: User demand is up across the board, HTS brings the promise of abundant bandwidth and potentially lower costs—and enabling smaller terminals with ground segment innovations will match the space segment to help overcome rain fade, enable higher data rates and allow service providers to take advantage of the opportunity to deliver enhanced service level agreements to customers across the globe. (Source: iDirect Satellite Connection site)