Will Tooway satellite broadband really help Digital Britain?

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 30 Apr 2009 at 17:02

Eutelsat is launching a new satellite service which it claims will help solve Britain's rural broadband divide.

The company will offer speeds of up to 10Mbits/sec downlink and 1Mbit/sec uplink, following the launch of the KA-SAT satellite next year.

For the time being, however, speeds are restricted to up to 2Mbits/sec on the downlink and only 256Kbit/sec upstream - a long way behind the headline speed of even bog standard ADSL, although faster than the actual connection speed in many rural areas.

Like ADSL, however, the satellite service is contended, meaning users won't necessarily receive full speed. Indeed, the company relies on a "progressive traffic management system" to curb excessive downloads.

The company wouldn't provide exact details of how the traffic management scheme worked, but said it applied variable limits depending on the amount of people downloading data. "You will normally be able to surf at maximum speed," claims Arduino Patacchini, director of multimedia at Eutelsat.

Unlike the satellite services of the past, Tooway has a data transmitter on the satellite, allowing it to provide the uplink as well as the down.

Such technology comes at a price: the satellite will cost "below £400" according to Patacchini, while the broadband service starts from £30 a month from a selection of local distributors.

The steep price probably explains Eutelsat's modest aim of reaching "many thousands" of Britons in the next year. Hardly the answer for the 30% of Britons who will never get high-speed fixed broadband, according to Communications Minister Lord Carter.