 | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
The I-4 satellites are made up of the INMARSAT BGAN, FleetBroadband and SwiftBroadband communications network. They provide Internet and telecom connections on the L band everywhere on Earth, except in polar regions.
Two general types of data services are currently provided:
Streaming is a service that guarantees the delivery of data. In this service, a terminal requests a specific bandwidth (currently available in 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, or 256 kbit/s), and if the current spot beam has sufficient resources, the requested bandwidth is allocated to the terminal. For example, if a terminal requests an 8 kbit/s streaming context, it will be able to send data at 8 kbit/s consistently. Consequently, streaming services are billed based on the duration of usage.
Background service is a best-effort approach to data delivery. Each spot beam provides a certain amount of usable bandwidth, and any bandwidth not used by streaming contexts is allocated for background contexts. This means that the actual bandwidth received with a background context may vary over time. The theoretical maximum bandwidth available is approximately 400 kbit/s. As a result, background contexts are billed based on data volume rather than duration of usage.
General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), also called 2.5G, is a packet orientated mobile data standard on the 2G cellular communication network's global system for mobile communications (GSM). GPRS was established by European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in response to the earlier CDPD and i-mode packet-switched cellular technologies. It is now maintained by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).
Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the digitalised circuits of the public switched telephone network. Work on the standard began in 1980 at Bell Labs and was formally standardized in 1988 in the CCITT "Red Book". By the time the standard was released, newer networking systems with much greater speeds were available, and ISDN saw relatively little uptake in the wider market. One estimate suggests ISDN use peaked at a worldwide total of 25 million subscribers at a time when 1.3 billion analog lines were in use. ISDN has largely been replaced with digital subscriber line (DSL) systems of much higher performance.
Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telephone line. Dial-up connections use modems to decode audio signals into data to send to a router or computer, and to encode signals from the latter two devices to send to another modem at the ISP.
In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide-bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Internet access. The transmission medium can be coaxial cable, optical fiber, wireless Internet (radio), twisted pair cable, or satellite.
Internet access is a facility or service that provides connectivity for a computer, a computer network, or other network device to the Internet, and for individuals or organizations to access or use applications such as email and the World Wide Web. Internet access is offered for sale by an international hierarchy of Internet service providers (ISPs) using various networking technologies. At the retail level, many organizations, including municipal entities, also provide cost-free access to the general public.
A leased line is a private telecommunications circuit between two or more locations provided according to a commercial contract. It is sometimes also known as a private circuit, and as a data line in the UK. Typically, leased lines are used by businesses to connect geographically distant offices.
A satellite telephone, satellite phone or satphone is a type of mobile phone that connects to other phones or the telephone network by radio link through satellites orbiting the Earth instead of terrestrial cell sites, as cellphones do. Therefore, they can work in most geographic locations on the Earth's surface, as long as open sky and the line-of-sight between the phone and the satellite are provided. Depending on the architecture of a particular system, coverage may include the entire Earth or only specific regions. Satellite phones provide similar functionality to terrestrial mobile telephones; voice calling, text messaging, and low-bandwidth Internet access are supported through most systems. The advantage of a satellite phone is that it can be used in such regions where local terrestrial communication infrastructures, such as landline and cellular networks, are not available.
Satellite Internet access is Internet access provided through communication satellites; if it can sustain high speeds, it is termed satellite broadband. Modern consumer grade satellite Internet service is typically provided to individual users through geostationary satellites that can offer relatively high data speeds, with newer satellites using the Ku band to achieve downstream data speeds up to 506 Mbit/s. In addition, new satellite internet constellations are being developed in low-earth orbit to enable low-latency internet access from space.
Telkom SA SOC Limited is a South African wireline and wireless telecommunications provider, operating in more than 38 countries across the African continent. Telkom is majority state-owned (55.3%) with the South African government owning 40.5% of Telkom, while another 14.8% is owned by another state-owned company - the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), which is closely linked to the South African government.
In communications, Circuit Switched Data (CSD) is the original form of data transmission developed for the time-division multiple access (TDMA)-based mobile phone systems like Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). After 2010 many telecommunication carriers dropped support for CSD, and CSD has been superseded by GPRS and EDGE (E-GPRS).
Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is the delivery of television content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. This is in contrast to delivery through traditional terrestrial, satellite, and cable television formats. Unlike downloaded media, IPTV offers the ability to stream the source media continuously. As a result, a client media player can begin playing the content almost immediately. This is known as streaming media.
Datastream is a type of broadband network connection in the United Kingdom. Datastream is a wholesale product in which the wholesale customer can purchase connectivity between their own point of presence and a number of end users. Some authors use the term "datastream" for replacing the term dataflow to avoid confusion with dataflow computing or dataflow architecture, based on an indeterministic machine paradigm.
The Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) is a global satellite network with telephony owned by Inmarsat using portable terminals. The terminals are normally used to connect a laptop computer to broadband Internet in remote locations, although as long as line-of-sight to the satellite exists, the terminal can be used anywhere. The value of BGAN terminals is that, unlike other satellite Internet services, which require bulky and heavy satellite dishes to connect, a BGAN terminal is about the size of a laptop and thus can be carried easily. The network is provided by Inmarsat and uses three geostationary satellites called I-4 to provide almost global coverage.
THAICOM 4, also known as IPSTAR 1, is a high throughput satellite built by Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) for Thaicom Public Company Limited. It was launched on August 11, 2005, from the European Space Agency's spaceport in French Guiana on board the Ariane rocket. The satellite had a launch mass of 6486 kilograms and is from SS/L's LS-1300 series of spacecraft.
Inmarsat is a British satellite telecommunications company, offering global mobile services. It provides telephone and data services to users worldwide, via portable or mobile terminals which communicate with ground stations through fifteen geostationary telecommunications satellites.
SITAONAIR is a company that enables airline passengers to use their smart devices including mobile phones and laptops for calls, text messaging, emails and Internet browsing.
Internet access is widely available in New Zealand, with 94% of New Zealanders having access to the internet as of January 2021. It first became accessible to university students in the country in 1989. As of June 2018, there are 1,867,000 broadband connections, of which 1,524,000 are residential and 361,000 are business or government.
FleetBroadband is maritime satellite internet, telephony, SMS texting, and ISDN network for ocean-going vessels using portable domed terminal antennas.
SES Broadband for Maritime is a two-way satellite broadband Internet service for use on private boats and commercial ships throughout European waters.
SwiftBroadband is an IP-based packet-switched communications network that provides a symmetric ‘always-on’ data connection of up to 650 kbit/s per channel for aircraft globally except for the polar regions, using the Inmarsat satellite constellation.
