Page 18 - IB July 2020

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MMG Communications was contracted by Samoa’s Pacific Games local organising committee to provide
production and distribution services globally.

HIGH SPEEDS AT LOW COST

NEW SATELLITE TECHNOLOGIES BRING INTERNET ACCESS TO

REMOTE PARTS OF THE PACIFIC

By Kevin McQuillan the time rather than nothing. And it’s really good in terms of
speed and cost.”
Remote areas of the Pacific have started to get cheap and Broadbridge is impressed by the speeds offered on the ka-
easy access to the internet. Richard Broadbridge, from com- band and the small size of the dish.
munications company MMG, explains the Kacific-1 satellite “We’re able to bring 40 mbps per second to a dish which is
system will provide what the long-standing, C-band satellite 75 cm in diameter.
system can’t, low-cost and high speed. Communities can also use a 1.2 metre antenna, put a
The Kacific satellite is the most powerful broadband satel- hotspot billing system on it, connect a few more terrestrial
lite serving the region to date, says Richard Broadbridge, Busi- radio antennas to the 1.2 metre antenna, and then onsell the
ness Development Manager for the Singapore-based company internet via a hotspot.
Melanesian Media Group (MMG). “So one person in the community – or a whole community
Its technology provides greater efficiency and therefore a would buy one dish – and you can have multiple users off the
lower cost per mbps. one dish.”
Founded in 2013 by Christian Patouraux, Kacific uses the Ka- The cost of a terminal to receive Kacific satellite internet is
band High Throughput Satellite, designed and built by Boeing around US$1300, and users can buy the internet per gigabyte
and launched into a geostationary orbit by Elon Musks’ Space- on capped plans without any long-term commitment.
X Falcon-9 launch vehicle last December. A collaboration between Kacific Broadband Satellites Group
This is disruptive technology, says Broadbridge, adding “it and the International Telecommunication Union has seen
will transform communications throughout the Pacific, Indone- Kacific provide equipment, such as Very Small Aperture Termi-
sia and the Philippines”. nals (VSATs), to deliver connectivity to help relief efforts after
“We’ve all been used to satellites which use the C and Ku normal network coverage was wiped out by Cyclone Harold in
bandwidth,” Broadbridge told Islands Business. April.
“Now C-band satellites is great for emergencies and it’s Satellite is the only way to improve communications in the
reliable. Uptime is 99.9 per cent guaranteed but the cost is Pacific, says Broadbridge, who left Fiji in 2012 to establish a
high. TV production company in Port Moresby making TV commer-
“But the KA band that Kacific uses doesn’t really like bad cials. He then went on to found Click TV, a free to air and Pay
weather, so users will have moments of interrupted coverage TV network in PNG.
due to higher latency. This is perfectly normal. Our tests have “We had no idea at the time that our friends at Digicel were
produced excellent results even during heavy rainfall. doing the same thing. Within weeks of our launch they also
“So the thinking is to give the people internet for 90% of started, and it became obvious we wouldn’t be able to take

18 Islands Business, July 2020