Unfortunately, that simply isn’t a reality for all government entities and agencies in the United States. Some small cities and rural towns – including geographically-isolated rural communities in places such as Alaska and the Midwest – are without access to broadband connectivity. And there are many places across this country where our government might want to have connected personnel in the field, or even IoT sensors that upload data to the cloud in real-time, that don’t have any connectivity – including access to wireless networks – because they’re just so remote.

If we’re going to embrace digital transformation and utilize these new technologies to their fullest, they need to be operable and accessible everywhere in the country. Unfortunately, there is currently a digital divide in America between places with existing terrestrial networks that have access to advanced technologies and IT capabilities, and those without them that are left behind or otherwise remain in the dark.

The benefits of these new technologies shouldn’t be limited only to the states, cities and municipalities that have access to high-bandwidth, terrestrial networks. And the federal government should be able to benefit from the IoT and other tools anywhere in our country – regardless of the presence of terrestrial networks.

These tools should be available to all parts of the U.S. Government – federal, state and city. And multi-orbit, high-throughput, low latency satellite networks could be the key to bridging that digital divide.

Building a bridge from space
Today’s advanced satellites are capable of delivering fiber-like connectivity to practically any corner of the globe, making them the perfect solution for leveling the digital playing field. However, there have traditionally been challenges keeping the U.S. government and its agencies from embracing satellite communications in this role.

Cost concerns, reliability challenges and fears about ease of use have long left government agencies uneasy about utilizing satellite more extensively and aggressively to meet their respective connectivity requirements. But this, too, could be about to change.

SES, one of the world’s largest satellite providers, is already operating a multi-orbit satellite constellation that is being utilized by the U.S. Government.

SES has made multiple exciting announcements about new capabilities, partnerships and technologies that it is launching to help address those fears and make satellite connectivity better, faster, easier and more accessible for government organizations. Let’s take a look at some of these announcements and what they could mean for government users.

Laying the groundwork for the government of tomorrow
SES announced that they had chosen SpaceX to launch their O3b mPOWER next generation satellites into orbit. The launches may be a few years away, but the satellites that they’ll carry have incredible potential to revolutionize the satellite industry. The O3b mPOWER satellites will be capable of delivering incredible bandwidth and throughputs, coupled with drastically reduced latency as a result of their location in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO).

The O3b mPOWER satellites are the next generation of SES’s existing O3b MEO satellites, which are already relied upon across the globe to deliver high-throughput, low-latency connectivity to geographically-isolated areas without terrestrial networks. The announcement of SpaceX as the launch partner for those satellites is just another step towards making this constellation a reality.

In addition to the SpaceX announcement, SES also announced the expansion of their existing relationship with Microsoft, which will make it easier for government agencies to utilize Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.

The cloud is the backbone for many of the advanced technologies that are making digital transformation so essential across the government today. The expanded partnership between SES and Microsoft will enable government users to leverage the company’s satellite-enabled managed services to connect locations and sites in remote and underserved locations globally that previously did not have access to cloud services.

Ultimately, these announcements illustrate a larger trend – SES and SES Space and Defense are laying the groundwork for a revolutionary new generation of satellites that will make satellite connectivity and services better, easier to use, more automated and  accessible than ever before for the government.

With this groundwork in place, a new constellation and satellite service will be built that will make it possible to empower digital government services and capabilities across our country – even in the most remote, rural and geographically-isolated of places. The days of the digital divide are numbered. Soon, there will no longer be “haves” and “have nots,” just an entire globe connected from space via next generation satellite.

To learn more about O3b mPOWER and its government use cases, click HERE.

The post Satellites will soon demolish the digital divide appeared first on SES Space and Defense.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the INDOPACOM Area of Responsibility (AoR). This region spans 36 countries and incorporates more than 50 percent of the world’s total population. It’s also one of the most important for our military, strategically, since it’s the location of multiple adversaries. Unfortunately, much of this AoR is separated from the U.S. by a vast ocean.

To learn about some of the different ways the military is utilizing satellites and other communications methods to enable connectivity in the INDOPACOM AoR, the Government Technology Insider’s Peter Jacobs recently sat down with two experts: Chris Kinman, Vice President of Business Development at SES Space and Defense, and Fred Ferares, Director of Defense at Verizon. During their discussion, Peter asked Chris and Fred about how LEO and MEO satellite networks can deliver the high-throughput, high-reliability connectivity that’s critical to DoD’s mission.

Here is what they had to say:

Government Technology Insider (GTI): INDOPACOM covers a huge area of the globe and includes allies, trading partners and adversaries and DoD has assigned more than 200 ships and 375,000 personnel to the region. So with all that diversity—geographic, terrain, environmental, cultural—are there common communications challenges that U.S. forces are facing in this region?

Chris Kinman, SES Space and Defense (CK): Oh, absolutely. The wide space, the ocean coverage presents so many challenges. On top of that, the weather, as it changes over the years, is presenting another challenge for such a widely-dispersed military force. So, there’s been quite a bit of a challenge in that area.

Fred Ferares, Verizon (FF): I agree. They’ve got some significant capabilities that are already present within the region, and you look at fixed locations, like the bases, the posts, the camps, and the stations, they’re dealing with challenges for diversity, redundancy, reliability. And there’s a lot of capability, as I said, in the AOR. But when you get to the deployed forces and the contested environments that they may have to operate in, in time of war, bandwidth and redundancy of capability is going to be an enormous challenge that needs to be addressed, especially as we are seeing the evolution of disruptive technologies being pushed to the deployed forces.

GTI: Do these issues limit the kinds of technologies that can actually be used in theater? Are some things just not practical for that sort of deployment?

FF: I think some of these technologies would be practical, but we have to change the mode or the model in which we deliver bandwidth to the deployed forces. So, with the evolution of things like machine-to-machine and AI, various cloud-based services, software-defined networking to deliver all that bandwidth to execute these missions, I think you need reliable communications. But in addition to that, you need compute and storage at the edge.

Just to use Verizon as an example, we have a 5G capability that we’re rolling out in the United States that has intelligent edge networking to take care of offloading that bandwidth back into the core. And I think that the services need to develop a similar model so that they can deliver with a speed of need the data, the processing at the edge, in a low-latency type experience.

This gets back to how you’re going to be able to deliver these new, modern, disruptive technologies. And there are a lot of organizations that are focused on trying to help deliver this. You’ve got folks like DARPA and the various labs that are looking at different communications methodologies, different architectures to deliver these types of capabilities to the warfighter.

GTI: High-throughput, more reliable bandwidth obviously supports in theater warfighting functions like C5ISR, targeting, situational awareness, and ass Fred mentioned, edge computing. What else could the military take advantage of?

CK: As you indicated and Fred talked about with the technology getting better, what we’ve done is looked ahead and tried to leapfrog and determine how we can increase our capabilities. (We’re looking) at the latest technology, the most powerful satellites we can develop in this day and age, to try to figure out how we can actually increase throughput, trying to get all that latency out of the way so that we can do those things down at the tactical edge. Maybe do more computing power, more processing, and more storage locally, rather than relying on some of the cloud trends that are happening right now.

We understand that cloud is important and we could probably service that cloud capability or need with low latency satellites. But we’ve just tried to find the right mix and right solution that will enable that speed to a better technology in the future. So we push the limits with our satellite technology. We’ve got another seven satellites that we want to launch into a Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) in the next couple of years. Once these are launched it  will definitely help you know what that need for lower latency, high throughput and better compute capability are at the edge of the battlefield.

FF: As Chris was saying, this ability to provide the low latency experience to the folks that are out there floating around on the oceans, for example, or as the DoD projects its power ashore and you need to bring that capability along with you. I think he’s exactly right that we also need to be able to deploy and support a capability to process at the edge, to store at the edge. And when you’re disconnected, operate at the edge. But then, when we rely upon the communications paths that are available—the satellite architecture that’s being improved every day as we speak—when that connection is restored, that we’re able to reach back to those various command and control nodes and  other resources outside the INDOPACOM AOR that can help us affect the DOD’s mission.

CK: Let me add something else related to the new satellite technologies in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO). What that actually provides is additional inherent resiliency and security. The fact that these satellites are actually moving overhead—like a mobile cell phone tower is actually moving overhead—all of that that technology that provides the linkage and the handoff and the network connectivity, that’s all been built-in years in the past, and we’ve been able to deploy that technology with these MEO satellites and provide lower latency (and) more security because they are moving, and provide additional bandwidth because they’re so low to the Earth. And that gives us more frequency space to provide other security measures for the waveform that’s actually provided to these end users that are out in remote areas in the Pacific.

GTI: What about interference with that technology – jamming and direct attacks on satellites? Are these risks greater with Medium Earth Orbit satellites?

CK: No, they’re actually a lot less because, the fact that the satellites are moving overhead, it requires the capability of threat forces to actually track those satellites, and that’s very difficult to do. The beams that are laid down on the Earth are very narrow and they’re very hard to detect because you have to actually be within that beam. The data that’s actually going through these satellite beams are encrypted and may, in fact, be spread using spread spectrum techniques to protect the waveform. So, all those variables contribute to a more secure and reliable sort of inherent anti-jam solution. So, we’re in a really good spot right now with the next generation of satellites.

GTI: When you’re dealing in these austere environments where personnel are widely dispersed, is interference a major issue?

FF: At the core of this is a question of how does the DOD execute its mission: do we use commercial SATCOM capabilities or stick to just military SATCOM capabilities? I think that the DOD should consider some sort of a blended approach in its architecture. My opinion only, not validated by any research here, but I wouldn’t think that an adversary would want to take out the entire satellite architecture that probably supports its own government and economies.

And at the scale that we’re talking about, too, for some sort of countermeasures against satellite communications, some sort of jamming, missiles, or any other type of technology to disable or destroy a satellite orbiting in support of the U.S. forces, when you start having the number of Lower and Middle Earth Orbit satellites that are available—you’ve got companies like SES here and then Amazon and OneWeb and Elon Musk and you name it—there’s a lot of different folks that are talking about adding to that satellite constellation at multiple different levels to support passing data around the planet.

So, I think if we can leverage what’s available and that helps us with our diversity and our redundancy in some sort of a meshed construct, I think the Department of Defense will benefit from that and minimize any risk to taking out pieces/parts/portions of the satellite architecture.

For the rest of their exciting interview, click HERE to read the original article on the Government Technology Insider. For additional information on the role that MEO and GEO satellite can play in enabling communications in the INDOPACOM AoR, click HERE to download the white paper, “High Throughput on the High Seas.”

The post How satellite can enable connectivity in the INDOPACOM AoR appeared first on SES Space and Defense.