[asterisk-biz] satellite & voip providers
Mark
mark at asteriskswitch.com
Tue Jan 10 02:16:12 MST 2006
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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