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Objectives
The HOST programme focused on the development of the Hellas Sat commercial offering in end-to-end satellite telecommunication services for supporting the delivery of bidirectional, (broadband) applications in Greece, the Balkans, SE Europe, and Middle East.
Since its launch in May 2003, Hellas Sat has received several requests for end-to-end satellite telecommunication service provision by a variety of potential customers for applications and generic services in the area of e-Government, e-Business, e-Inclusion/Digital Divide.
Also, market data in the area of interest for Hellas Sat, supported the business case for such an end-to-end service provision. In order to address this market and complete its basic offering of capacity for TV and occasional transmissions, Hellas Sat and his partners decided to develop an end-to-end satcom service able to HOST a wide range of applications.
Since December 2006, a range of Pilots became officially operational within the project addressing representative market segments (the pilots informal launch took place during summer 2006).
Figure 1: Overall Pilot System Architecture
click for larger image
Challenges
The key issues addressed in the HOST project are the following:
- Implement and validate the required end-to-end telecommunications infrastructure by adopting the DVB-RCS standard.
- Perform pilot trials addressing typical users and applications.
- Strong footprint of Hellas Sat 2 in the region.
- Access to wide market basis through main OTE shareholder.
Plan
The project was managed according to the Work Breakdown Structure, project schedule and the list of deliverables as a standard engineering approach. The Plan of the Project includes the following main phases:
- Requirements and Planning.
- Design and Development.
- Integration and Commissioning.
- Pilot Trial Operations.
- Pilot Trial Evaluation.
- Management.
The associated Management policy has been defined so as to guarantee an effective and economical conduction of the study.
Current Status
After following a successful DVB-RCS Network Installation and Commissioning as well as Overall System Validation, all the pilots became fully operational. The Corporate Connectivity pilot offered ALUMIL S.A. an ideal way of interconnecting their distant locations and thereby exchange operational data. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs communicated with 3 of its embassies abroad through VoIP technology.
In Milos Island, there are two WiFi via DVB-RCS Networks operating in the capital (Chora) of the island and the port (Adamas). The Tele-Education and the Tele-Medicine pilots were operated on a live-session basis organised by the Institute AKMI and the Medical School respectively.
Hellas Sat had decided, before the finalisation of the Project, to enter into commercial operation as of January 2006. Hellas Sat net! is the new brand name of the service offerings by Hellas Sat and the initial target market is Greece, Cyprus and the Balkan area. The company, has, from the first year of operation of this new service, exceeded targets set and is looking at making a profitable business out of it in 2009.
Services currently offered commercially range from 512 Kbps to 2Mbps providing the ideal broadband solution for distant places in the countries of the target market.
Still in the framework of the project, Hellas Sat was awarded an extension to design, build and demonstrate a fully mobile Satellite Broadband VAN for the purpose of assisting the marketing effort, gaining the know how in similar applications and developing a market around Mobile Satellite Broadband.
The VAN was successfully manufactured and was used for preliminary demonstrations in 2009. The HOST VAN extension was judged to be very successful up to that point, but it was terminated by mutual agreement in February 2010, due to the lack of resources to perform the planned pilots with the governmental agencies.
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