Sat-ND, 12.8.97

• from: owner-sat-nd@tags1.dn.net
• Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 22:48:02 GMT

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LAUNCHES

Chinese no go

Until now it was unclear whether the Filipino Mabuhay satellite would be launched aboard a Chinese rocket. The dates given varied between August 8 and 12. As today is August 12, the Chinese authorities had to admit that in fact no satellite has been launched at all.

Instead, the launch will be delayed by a few days and is now expected to take place around August 16. An exact date was not given, and of course no reasons for the delay, either. While searching my archive for details on Mabuhay, I didn't find anything interesting apart from the fact that it appears to be built by the U.S. company Loral.

I found a lot of other references of Filipino satellites though, sometimes suggesting that Mabuhay was a company that operates satellites by the name of Agila one of which should be positioned at 144 degrees East but is not in my list of geostationary satellites. Those Agila gadgets, which may also be operated by a company called PASI, appear to be either indigenous or built by a French company and may be launched by Arianespace. Phew... What a bloody mess!. Can anybody shed some light on this, please? I'm confused!

SATELLITES

KuwaitSat?

National communications satellites are en vogue all over the world. Here comes another one -- maybe.

According to the country's official news agency KUNA, Kuwait wants a an own satellite in anticipation of a rise in the use of satellite telephones. A spokesman for the Telecommunications ministry said "the ministry is determined to launch a satellite and is examining the options."

The United Arab Emirates are the first Arab country with a national satellite. As reported, U.S. companies Hughes, Lockheed and France's Aerospatiale are bidding for a US$850-million dollar contract top build the planned Thuraya satellite.

Sputnik 2 launch as planned

Despite recent problems with the Mir space station, Russia is still set to commemorate the 40^th anniversary of the world's first satellite launch by placing some kind of "working monument" in space during a space walk.

The Cold War is over, the Soviet Union has crumbled, Russia's space program is struggling with money troubles and faltering technology the best of which was sold to American-Russian joint ventures anyway. But as a matter of fact, the world's only working (okay, sort of working) space station is the Russian Mir.

Mir Kosmonauts will (probably on October 4) take Sputnik 2 on a space walk, an 83-kg replica of Sputnik 1 which is smaller than the original but is fully working. The satellite will send out a radio signal similar to the one broadcast by Sputnik during its three-month life (but probably not "The East is Red" in morse code.)

"We think the launching of this satellite will have a positive effect on the cosmonauts... a sort of diversion,"

said Viktor Kurilov, director of the Sputnik-2 program.

Wooribyul!

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. announced it has developed high-capacity memory microchips for the South-Korean-made Wooribyul 3 satellite in co-operation with the satellite research laboratory of the South-Korean Institute of Science and Technology.

Company officials said the Wooribyul 3 scientific satellite requires special memory devices to support its camera. The satellite will be launched in July 1998.

I admit that this bit usually would have never made its way into this so-called newsletter but the satellite's name is just too fascinating. Wooribyul. Love it. Samsung said it developed two types of microchips with 10 GB of memory for Wooribyul. Samsung also said a new package was specially designed to overcome extreme conditions in space, including intense radiation that Wooribyul will undoubtedly be exposed to.

Oh, what does Wooribyul mean by the way? "Our star." I prefer Wooribyul anyway.

DIGITAL

Indovision special

Indonesia will have its own satellite up in geostationary orbit this autumn (the launch aboard an Ariane rocket is currently planned for October 10.) What will Indostar offer? Amongst other things, Digital TV.

The launch, originally been planned for this month, had to be postponed following technical problems with the satellite that meanwhile is on its way to the European Launch Centre in Kourou. (Not the first delay: Indostar was expected to be launched early this year.)

Peter Gontha, the Indonesian Rupert Murdoch as he is sometime called, will by the end of the year offer a 40-channel digital TV bouquet called Indovision through his company PT Datacom Asia. The channels can be received with 1-metre dishes. Reportedly, the standard dish size for satellite reception in Indonesia is three times this diameter.

Indovision will be available in the S Band (2.5 - 2.6 GHz.) Reception equipment will be provided by French producer Thomson, who under its brand name RCA also pioneered as supplier of reception equipment for the US digital package DirecTV. This might not be a bad deal: Indonesia counts 195 million inhabitants and is not only fourth most populous country in the world but right now also the biggest TV market in Asia apart from China.

Indovision,currently uses Palapa-C1 satellite for broadcasting 19 channels, including Turner Broadcasting's CNN and TNT, five of Rupert Murdoch's Star TV channels, BBC, HBO, Discovery and ESPN. According to Gontha, ix Indonesian terrestrial channels would be added to the network by the end of this month. The service has so far attracted just 26,000 subscribers. Gontha expects the number to grow once it can be received with "small" 1-m dishes.

Did I say PT Datakom was Gontha's company? Well, he's president director and holds a 24.23 percent stake. The rest is owned by some of Indonesia's most powerful businessmen -- President Suharto's second son Bambang Trihatmodjo controls one-third of its equity, Anthony Salim of the Salim Group holds 28.57 percent. Other minority shareholders include Indonesian telecommunications company PT Indonesian Satellite Corp (Indosat, obviously the satellite operator) with a five percent stake.

But who's the satellite operator anyway? Talking to Reuters, Gontha said that Datakom had been allotted three more satellite slots. He even was quoted as saying he would order another satellite by the end of this year to be launched in 1999 with subsequent launches planned for 2001 and 2003. He said Indovision could use up to 60 channels, and other space on the satellites could perhaps be leased. Yeah, perhaps.

Does it really matter? Despite also owning parts of at least four domestic radio stations, Gontha says he spends only about a quarter of his time on the media business. He prefers to concentrate on the privately-owned Chandra Asri petrochemical firm, of which he is the chief executive officer, and relax at the jazz club "Jamz" he also owns.

Yet another new digital service (terrestrial)

U.S. Sinclair Broadcast Group is planning to use its digital television channels to broadcast multiple channels of television. The decision to proceed to a "multi-cast" application is based on the available technology already employed by the direct-to-home satellite industry as well as several European countries that already are proceeding with multi-cast through terrestrial TV transmitters.

The new multi-cast service has the potential to provide TV programming similar to that of the cable industry with quality similar to the direct-to-home satellite industry at a cost to the public that should be less than either service. The multi-cast use of the digital spectrum will permit a number of TV channels to be broadcast over one of today's standard TV channels. Multi-cast use of the digital spectrum is permitted under the new FCC rules for digital television adopted in April of this year. In accordance with those rules, Sinclair plans to provide its current TV program channel for free. Other TV programs, like that found on cable, will be available on a subscription basis. Sinclair will group several TV stations' digital channels together to permit the delivery of a large number of free and subscription-based channels.

Sinclair plans to roll out a first demonstration of multi-casting in its headquarters market of Baltimore in January of 1998. The first demonstration will use at least two television stations' digital channels. Later in 1998, at the annual broadcasting convention in Las Vegas, where Sinclair also owns a station, multi-casting will also be demonstrated.

Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. is one of the United States' largest broadcast groups, owning and/or providing programming services to 29 television stations in 21 separate markets, and owning, providing sales and programming services to, or having options to acquire, 34 radio stations in 8 separate markets. (Whoof! What an arresting sentence! Will you do that again just for me?) Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. is one of the United States' largest broadcast groups, owning and/or providing programming services to 29 television stations in 21 separate markets, and owning, providing sales and programming services to, or having options to acquire, 34 radio stations in 8 separate markets. We won't elaborate on radio here; the essence is, in a nutshell, that the television group reaches approximately 15% of U.S. television households and includes ABC, CBS, FOX, WB, and UPN affiliates.

Yet another new digital service (satellite)

TV/COM International, Inc., a subsidiary of South Korea's Hyundai Electronics, has formed an alliance with Digital Access Network, Inc. (DANI.)

Under the terms of the alliance, TV/COM will supply its MPEG-2/DVB-compliant digital compression and conditional access equipment for DANI's new satellite distribution service. A newly announced company, DANI founders include former TV/COM executive Jim Shelton, former Showtime Satellite Networks senior vice president Larry Rebich and former AlphaStar (the digital DTH service that just went bankrupt) director Brian Haan.

DANI is dedicated to servicing the needs of educational, ethnic and private business networks, providing programmers with satellite uplink and transponder capacity, conditional access control, call centre services and an exclusive signal security warranty. The company will use TV/COM's digital compression and conditional access equipment, and receivers from Hyundai and other sources.

BUSINESS

EchoStar: 110,000 new subscribers in three months

Echostar published some interesting figures, the first of the company's post-Murdoch era, i.e. since the joint venture with Murdoch's AskyB went down the drain. Are they good enough? Well... you decide.

EchoStar Communications Corporation reported total revenues of US$100.8 million for the three months ended June 30, 1997, a 37% increase compared to total revenue of $73.5 million for the three months ended June 30, 1996.

EchoStar reported net losses of approximately US$63.8 million for the three-month period ended June 30, 1997, as compared to US$22.6 million reported for the comparable period in 1996. EchoStar also reported net losses of approximately US$126.7 million for the six-month period ended June 30, 1997, as compared to US$29.8 million reported for the same period in 1996.

For the six months ended June 30, 1997, EchoStar reported total revenue of US$172.8 million, a 50% increase compared to US$115.0 million for the six months ended June 30, 1996. These increases were the direct result of the Company's rapidly growing Dish Network(SM) subscriber base. During the three months ended June 30, 1997, the Dish Network experienced strong subscriber growth, adding approximately 110,000 net subscribers. Subscriber growth has accelerated in the third quarter and the Company expects this trend to continue throughout the second half of 1997.

Tele Danmark goes East

Tele Danmark A/S, a Danish telecommunications services group, announced that it has acquired 469,624 shares in the Czech company Ceske Radiokomunikace (CRK) corresponding to an ownership share of 20.8%.

The investment in CRK both reflects Tele Danmark's continued interest in contributing to the development of the telecommunications sector in the Czech Republic, and the company's confidence in CRK's ability to play a major part in this development.

CRK was founded in 1994 on the basis of parts of the former Sprava Radiokomunikace Praha. Today, CRK is the leading company in the Czech Republic within the following business activities:

• Transmission and distribution of television and radio signals
• Satellite services (Intelsat and Eutelsat)

• Radio transmission of telephone and data signals

In addition to being market leader in the Danish telecommunications market, Tele Danmark participates in considerable companies in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Hungary, Poland, the Ukraine and Lithuania.

http://www.teledanmark.dk/

FEEDBACK

Sat-ND, 11.8.97 -- The LEO feud, continued from yesterday

Yes I claim Orbcomm does not match your description, and I even add that Faisat doesn't either. Both systems are indeed LEO telecommunication systems, but are near-real-time messaging systems. This is incompatible with real-time stream communications, like phone. Furthermore Orbcomm and Faisat are low speed.

Maybe we summarize the LEO systems currently or soon available:

1. low speed, low cost: ok for messaging systems operating in near real-time, store and forward mode. Frequencies: VHF, UHF Examples: Faisat, Orbcomm, Starsys
2. high speed, large cost: voice and data, real-time, bent pipe mode. Frequencies: L-, S- (with mobile), and Ka-band (gateways) Examples: Ecco, Globalstar, Iridium, (+ Ellipso which uses MEO)

3. very high speed, very large cost: multimedia applications, real-time, on-board switching + inter-satellite links. Frequencies: Ka-band Examples: Mstar, Skybridge, Teledesic

I understand reading too much sat-blurb (press releases) has confused you. Don't believe everything they say, Orbcomm is not appropriate for an intercontinental video conference and Iridium is not cost effective to read parameters from a sea platform every few hours. Got the difference?

[isn't this a nice contribution for sat-nd?]

(Jean-Philippe Donnio)

't is indeed! I include it on a "to whom it may concern" basis as I don't care too much for details, as you may know. Who needs details! <ggg> It's just too hot at this time of year to do some research. -- Ed.

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