The following note is from an acquaintance of mine at Lockheed Martin Telecommunications, in Sunnyvale CA. If you are interested in more information, or would be willing to be interviewed, please contact Doug Graham directly.

VSAT stands for Very Small Aperture Terminal, referring to 18 inch dish antennas.

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VSAT Survey

Lockheed Martin is contemplating deployment of a geosynchronous (GEO) satellite network which will offer bandwidth-on-demand asymmetric services suited to high rate or bursty data traffic. We have retained the management consulting firm KPMG to assist with a market survey of potential users.

The satellite network will be interoperable with terrestrial wireline and wireless networks and offer service at datarates of 27 Mb/s (Mega bits per sec) outbound to selected user terminals (i.e. multicast) and 2 Mb/s return (i.e. backhaul) from each user terminal to a central ground station hub. Hubs can be either dedicated to a single user or shared with multiple users. User terminals will have antenna diameters of about one meter. The system will provide user-selectable security and Quality of Service attributes for both data and video services.

One of our hypotheses is that there are niche markets in a number of industries where a 2 Mb/s backhaul channel has value. Applications could include: central monitoring of multiple remote (moveable) video surveillance units, SCADA data (or data-time histories) aggregated from multiple sources, alternate trusted path for backup control or disaster recovery and collaborative work involving constant transfer of large data files between colleagues at dispersed locations.

Would you be available for a brief 45 min interview by KPMG and Lockheed-Martin business development staff? Time and location at your convenience. In return, we would be willing to share the results of our primary research study.

Sincerely, Doug Graham, Partner Development Manager,
408-543-3326, pgr 800-725-5079, doug.j.graham@lmco.com