Funding for a second satellite is expected to come from the government

Even though it has yet to launch its first satellite, Avanti, the satellite broadband provider is fully expecting the partial funding of the second satellite to come from the government.

The government has made the promise that in order to provide broadband to all it will be spending around £200 million and Avanti is expecting to receive a sizeable share of this money according to the company’s CEO. The company have spoken very little about the launch delays of its first satellite, which has now been rescheduled for next year even though it has advised that an even greater number of services could be provided if enough funding is given for the launch of its second satellite.

The company originally had a deal with SpaceX for the launch of its first satellite, but with the slipping schedule of the Falcon 9 from SpaceX it decided to sign an agreement with Arianespace that is set to depart with its HYLAS satellite in May 2010, which means that the delays that have been suffered are not Avanti’s fault.

In small communities where a single broadband connection can be shared efficiently, Satellite broadband will work fine, although with many applications becoming increasingly sensitive to lag the latency caused by the signal needing to go into orbit is becoming more of a problem.

Users with a 66cm dish will receive speeds of up to 2Mbps through the HYLAS if latency issue are ignored, but the HYLAS-2 can offer more effectively shared speeds of up to 10Mbps, which is why it is looking to secure the funding from the government.

With the promise to provide speeds of at least 2Mbps to every home in the UK by Lord Carter in his Digital Broadband report it is likely that satellite broadband will be seen as one of the few method of reaching this promise but taxpayers in the UK have already thrown a large amount of funding into the HYLAS, which came from the European Space Agency.

With many of the taxpayers in urban areas realising that they will be paying for the broadband services of rural users the wish to make large investments into getting everyone in the UK on a high-speed broadband service has almost disappeared along the Lord Carter.

Source – The Register