From Multimedia Futures, a sister publication
To meet the exploding demand from Internet service providers for bandwidth, Rockville, Maryland satellite networking company Orion Atlantic LP plans to launch an Internet-specific service in September. We are actively involved in discussions with major Internet access providers on a collaboration. It is not out of the question that a UUnet would do with a satellite operator what it did with MFS (Metropolitan Fibre Systems), said Richard Greco, senior vice-president of marketing for Orion At lantic LP, a 42%-owned affiliate of Orion Network Systems Inc. We have what the Internet needs – ubiquitous bandwidth at economic prices. Graham Lomas, vice-president of Amsterdam-based Orion Atlantic Europe Inc, said the plan may involve combining resources, such as Orion’s own VSAT network, with an Internet service provider’s network. The Orion VSAT network, which it uses for internal communication, has six nodes and covers the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, France, the Netherlands, the UK, Italy and the US. It will have 12 nodes by the end of year, Lomas said. Joe O’Neill, Orion’s newly hired, US-based director of Internet services, says the service will be targeted at corporations as well as Internet service providers. The revelation, at Communication Week International’s Networked Economy conference, came just prior to Orion’s announcement in Prague that it has captured just over $1m worth of contracts for point-to-point connections from central European Interne t providers to Orion’s gateway in Maryland. The contracts are for a 256Kbps link for Telbank Poland in Warsaw, a 64Kbps link for Bel Pagette Romania in Bucharest and a 128Kbps link for Quantum doo in Ljubljana. Our Internet business has gone from nothing to between 5% and 10% of the business overnight. It’s taking off insanely, and that is why we’re doing this, Greco declared. Europe Online contract Orion’s flurry of Internet activity began last summer with a three-year contract with Europe Online SA to provide two 2Mbps lines from its headquarters in Luxembourg to the AT&T Corp Interchange facilities in the Boston area.
By Marsha Johnston
Since then, Europe Online has abandoned Interchange for the Internet, but is sticking with Orion. Europe Online director of telecommunications and broadcasting Marc Durbach says the firm decided to keep one of the lines to hook into Boston-based Internet provider BBN Planet Inc and to renegotiate with Orion to use the other line across Europe. Although Europe Online has not decided on the exact node locations, Durbach said it will be buying more capacity from Orion, exchanging the full duplex 2Mbps line it contract ed for three 2Mbps unidirectional lines from Luxembourg to the UK, France and Germany. The one major difference in Europe will be that the line will be asymmetrical, we’ll use the 2Mbps line for sending data to the user and land lines for receiving low-volume user requests at the server, Durbach said. He said the combination provides the advantages of reasonably priced broadband communication for high-volume Internet data transmission and the speed of land lines for data requests without the high cost of European leased lines. He noted that the cost of the two 2Mbps lines from Orion were nearly half that of land-based lines. Despite a certain delay with satellite, he said, it’s better to go to the US backbone with satellite rather than via the European backbone because it is overloaded today. Also, with satellite, you can get full 2Mbps E1 instead of the US T1 standard of 1.5Mbps on land lines. Durbach also noted that getting leased lines can take three months. With Orion, it is only the time to get the dish installed and get approval, which was six or seven weeks in our case. It’s much quicker, which is important when you have as fast a ramp-up time as we do, he said. Orion’s existing KU-band satellite, at 37.5o west, covers from Helsinki to Kiev to northern Africa to Denver. It will launch a second satellite at the end of 1998, at 12o east, that will have a footprint stretching from the Ural mountains to Cleveland, Ohio to South America and the Caribbean. The second satellite duplicates about half of the existing footprint, while moving it further east and south, which allows us to plan for more resistance and to offer a direct connection from Europe to South America, said Lomas. It will significantly expand our coverage, said Greco, adding that Orion does not yet provide South America connections.
