There are fewer than fifty days until the company building the [Australian] National Broadband Network (NBN) will blast its first broadband satellite 36,000 kilometres into orbit, with a planned launch date of October 1.
Blasting off from French Guiana, an overseas region of France, the announcement will be welcome news for those on the existing interim satellite service, which has suffered from slow speeds due to congestion.
Weighing[sic] nearly 6400 kilograms, it is one of the world's largest communications satellites and is the first of two that NBN will launch into space. The second will launch later next year "to ensure there is sufficient capacity to meet the needs of users in regional and remote areas", Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in a statement.
The satellites will deliver peak download speeds of up to 25 megabits per second regardless of where people live, Turnbull said, meaning that Australians living in rural and regional areas will have access to a satellite service "much better than they currently experience".
Scheduled to launch from Guiana Space Centre in South America, Sky Muster is set to progressively deliver broadband to more than 200,000 homes and businesses in rural and remote Australia from next year.
Julia Dickinson, NBN's company's managing space systems architect, said the satellite would play a crucial role in levelling the playing field between city and bush.
"Many rural and remote Australians do not have access to a quality broadband service and continue to experience dial-up level speeds,"; she said. "Sky Muster will help deliver world-class broadband services to the bush – it will offer better opportunities for distance education online through use of video-conferencing as well as improved access for specialist telehealth applications in the home."
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2, Informative) by virens on Friday August 14 2015, @08:13AM
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] is your friend:
However, this is just a wish - no one knows the price, since the telecommunication problem is being solved by lawers and beancounters. There are many truths: this truth [cloudfront.net] is from labours (you know, that utter feminist fiasco Julia Gillard), and this truth from liberals [amazonaws.com], and my truth (I live in Newcastle, Australia) is that there is no NBN in Newcastle, ony freakin' copper from Telstra, Optus and Internode...
All in all, Fraudband is still nowhere in sight, and hopefully this lonely satellite will give at least some connectivity to rural areas.