In today’s world, the demand for a reliable broadband connection any time and anywhere is considered a necessity. This poses immense challenges for a terrestrial infrastructure to the more remote parts of the planet that cannot be economically reached, and for reliable communications to ships, aircraft and land vehicles such as trains.
While satellite technologies already exist to meet these challenges, including compact electronically tracking antennas, spectrum allocations need to be made to Mobile Satellite Service (MSS) in order to facilitate this demand in service. Such allocations need to be made on a world-wide basis, permitting ubiquitous operation of typical earth stations, and ensuring the protection of ultra-small aperture antennas. These stringent requirements can be met only by means of additional spectrum allocations to MSS.
This workshop will provide a platform for discussion and information exchange between administrations, satellite system operators, the space and user terminal industry and ESA on market needs as well as technical information on system concepts and technologies for the coming decade. It is intended to support the discussions by live demonstrations of MSS concepts for mobile broadband services.
MSS is an established part of the communications eco-system, providing integral land, aeronautical and maritime mobile services. Most existing MSS systems are narrowband systems with limited amounts of spectrum in congested frequency bands below 3 GHz. The World Radio Conference-012 Agenda Item 1.25 provides an opportunity to allocate spectrum for broadband MSS at higher frequencies — 4 to 16 GHz — allowing MSS growth in order to help satisfy the world’s increasing demand for mobile broadband services.
ESA_1-5800
ESA_1-5800 is currently running an ARTES 1 project with EADS Astrium (DE) as prime contractor entitled The Changing Regulatory and Evolutionary Environment and its impact on the Satellite Communication Business.
This project supports ESA in light of a changing regulatory and technically evolutionary environment in defending the needs of the satellite communication community to maintain future availability and growth potential of the frequency spectrum needed for the provision of satellite communication and broadcasting services.
The main features of this study should result in the clarification and promotion of seven key SatCom items in the regulatory domain, of which three deal with regulation in the European Union while the other cover issues in preparation of Agenda Items to be dealt with at the next World Radiocommunication Conference 2012.
Two workshops have already taken place with the Berlin workshop to be the final event to gather further input and discussions.
For more information, please see the contact and project page links in the column to the right. Please note that the workshop is by invitation only.
