Estimate of satellite vs. Land-based traffic

Thu Jan 8 00:20:50 UTC 2009

At least in the US, satellite use is fairly limited compared to fiber
and copper,
mainly in the following areas
- TV broadcast
- Data and voice to remote areas (a few hundred Alaska villages,
   some connectivity up to oil drilling areas in Alaska, though
there's also fiber,
   plus some Internet in non-wired parts of the US.  I'm not aware of regular
   telco use of satellites for service in the middle 48 states.  Is Alohanet or
   something like it still running in Hawaii?)
- Some emergency backup applications such as restoration for carriers
  (redundant cables are nice, but you need access in multiple failure scenarios
   such as floods and earthquakes.)
- Specialized enterprise applications (some years ago, VSAT was fairly common
  for credit-card support at gas stations, malls, etc.  I know one
grocery store chain
  that finally moved to terrestrial in the late 90s, forced by
Microsoft application protocols
  that couldn't handle the VSAT latency.)

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             Thanks;     Bill

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