[asterisk-biz] satellite & voip providers

[Mark]

There is a company in Mexico that has apparently tested Supernettel 
service with their satellite service. They CLAIM excellent results but I 
have my doubts. I know as a former uplink operator that the latency 
round trip up and back to a bird is about 600ms from North America. In 
fact if we used an eastern satellite such as one over above the 
Carribean from the Northwestern USA, that latency often seemed to be  
more like a second. It was easy to see and estimate with a countdown 
tape and the two signals on side by side monitors (leaving to the 
satellite and the return from the satellite) That delay would apply that 
to voice packets both coming and going, and I really dont know how 
anyone could carry on a normal phone conversation under those 
circumstances..

Of course you could make your own calculations however the distance of a 
geosynchronous satellite is 27,300 (possibly 23,700 as I do not recall 
exactly) miles above the equator, and factoring the speed of light. Keep 
in mind that the further you are from the equator that distance greatly 
increases and the Earth is also curved. There is sometimes additional 
latency introduced at the satellite.
There are low earth orbit satellites such as Iridium. In fact I once 
made an Iridium phone call, and the latency was barely more than an 
international long distance call.. The advantage of low earth orbit 
satellites is that the latency is greatly reduced, as the distance is less.

I know that Sprint several years back started a low earth orbit internet 
and phone service. It was abandoned only a short time later as I recall. 
I think it is about time that the tecnology gets revisited.

Bringing lower latency internet to the world via low earth orbit 
satellites would be a potentially huge global market. Low earth orbit 
satellites circle the globe, so once the sattellites are in place, 
serving Africa is no different from serving the USA. Geosyncronous or 
Geostationary satellites remain in the same place relative to the earth, 
and maintain a higher orbit.

Mark de Leon Martinez
Supernettel.com


James Sharp wrote:

> Not directly Asterisk related, but I'm wondering if anyone has an 
> idea/feel for what the call would be for companies who can offer voip 
> termination over a dedicated satellite link (not DirectWay or anything 
> like that).
>
> I'm thinking more towards the countries in Africa or the Middle East 
> where voip over Internet is filtered/restricted or the Internet 
> infrastructure just isn't there.
>
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