Eutelsat beats Dawn to space

By Siyabonga Africa, ITWeb junior journalist

Johannesburg, 02 Apr 2009

Eutelsat is launching its W2A satellite tomorrow. Worth more than 130 million euros (R1.6 billion), it will have 10 C-band transponders dedicated to servicing Africa's growing demand for GSM trunking and enterprise networks.

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) explains that, due to poor terrestrial infrastructure, satellite is the only alternative in Africa for providing telephony backhaul.

“There is strong demand for C-band over Africa, because it is less affected by heavy rain downpours such as thunderstorms over the central region of Africa,” says CSIR X-band establishment engineer Pieter Kotz'e.

A statement from Paris-based Eutelsat says the W2A, which will be launched by an ILS Proton Breeze M rocket, from Baikonur Cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan, will have a payload of 46 Ku-band transponders. It will also have the 10 C-band transponders, which will be connected to a wide footprint of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, with a second beam pointed towards Southern Africa and islands in the Indian Ocean.

Additionally, an S-band antenna will deliver next-generation services, such as video and data for mobile phones, to telecommunications providers in Western Europe.

Space race

In the meantime, Intelsat's $250 million (R2.5 billion) New Dawn satellite is still making its way towards its 2011 launch. The joint venture, led by Intelsat and South African investor Convergence Partners, recently secured a loan worth more than R250 million from the African Development Bank.

An unnamed source says the W2A will be crucial towards providing telecommunications services to areas which cannot be accessed in lieu of fibre-optic networks.

“Any additional satellite capacity, no matter who the service provider is, is always good,” says the source. “Not only will cellular operators have more backhaul to work with, banks will also be able to connect to branches in remote areas via satellite.”

While the pan-African satellite already has contracts signed with Vodacom, its subsidiary Gateway Communications, Zain Nigeria and Gilat Satcom, it is yet to be established if the W2A satellite has scored any contracts with telcos in Africa. Calls to Eutelsat went unanswered.

“Yet the C-band frequency can cover the whole of the African continent and it wouldn't be surprising to see some telcos buying bandwidth from Eutelsat,” says the source.

Kotz'e concurs and says “anyone providing cellphone services in Africa could use this” satellite. Yet he adds South African service providers might not buy into the satellite due to the high standard of terrestrial infrastructure in the country.