PAGE CONTENTS
Objectives
The objective of the DDSO study is to assess the contribution that satellite technologies could bring into a global European federated programme to bridge the digital divide on a pan-European scale, including the 25 European Union countries, plus Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Albania, Andorra, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Monaco, Norway, San Marino, Serbia and Montenegro, Switzerland and Vatican City.
The study aims to consolidate the understanding of broadband market needs from now until 2020; derive appropriate mission requirements, system specifications, and then design, size, assess costs, performance and benefits of the most appropriate satellite-based solutions.
The study puts emphasis on the need to follow a stepped approach in order to address needs of the digital divide both on a short (Target 1) and medium / longer term (Target 2) basis.
Technical and Accompanying Measures to be proposed for Target 1 are based on the stimulation of demand in order to increase volume of traffic for preliminary economies of scale.
Target 2 has to be endorsed and built as a European Federated Programme, driven by a political willingness to reduce the e-divide at a wide scale level.
Challenges
The DDSO study aims at defining a programme enabling ESA to address the following key issues:
- Contribute to the implementation of the Lisbon strategy allowing better availability of broadband access services in underserved areas of the EU25,
- Promote the usage of public satellite services over the EU25, make the EU 25 a domestic market for public satellite services and allow structuring of service distributors over Europe.
Main technical issues addressed to meet this goal were related to the identification, development, validation of the key components of new multi-beam flexible payloads embarked on the Alphabus platform and embedded into the most appropriate end-to-end communications system.
Plan
The flow of activities has been split into two phases:
- During Phase 1, efforts have been concentrated on market needs characterisation, identification of institutional initiatives around e-divide, identification of technical features of the Target 1 system, preparation of Target 2 mission and system requirements.
- Phase 2 has addressed the Target 2 system and sub-system design, architectural trade-offs, performance, deployment strategy and profitability assessment. The candidate solutions have been benchmarked with respect to end-user benefits and profitability of the value chain. Recommendations have then been provided on public support necessary to reduce market, business and technology risks.
Current Status
The DDSO study was completed in Q3 2005 and a public presentation was held at ESA/ESTEC in Noordwijk the Netherlands on 22 May 2006.
One of the next steps following this study corresponds to candidate missions in Ka-band currently considered through two of the Phases A of the Alphasat programme.
