Dedicated Backbone Connectivity
BusinessCom Dedicated Backbone Connectivity (DBC) solutions feature fully dedicated commited information rate (CIR) links with global worldwide satellite coverage including the world's most demanding locations. Primarily designed to transfer large, unlimited amounts of traffic - be it voice, video or data, BusinessCom's DBC solutions are the the most effective connectivity options for large Internet Service Providers, VoIP carriers, Videoconferencing and Enterprise WAN networks, available from 64 kbit/s and up to 155 Mbit/s configurations per each VSAT.
Why BusinessCom?
Not all dedicated satellite connectivity providers are the same. Unlike shared satellite Internet services, the dedicated standard features committed information rates - an always-on guaranteed amount of bandwidth per each customer. This leaves almost no opportunities for the network operator to opimize bandwidth costs and stay ahead of the competition: the battlefield is now transformed from the smart bandwidth management concepts into the opportunity and availability to offer the best spectral efficiency, SLA and terrestrial peering, along with skilled technical support and value-add services. The success mostly depends on the availability of an Earth-based teleport to uplink to a particular satellite at a particular space segment cost, the antenna size installed at the teleport facilities, HPA (amplifier) power and the modulation capabilities. All these factors have to ideally match the requirements of an end customer to derive the most cost-effective dedicated solution.
Network operators today are limited to offer solutions originally embedded in their own business plans from the start. It is quite impossible for a single teleport facility to present all the connectivity options at once because infrastructure required is very expensive. For example, a particular teleport may offer an affordable small sub-1 Mbit/s service but once you upgrade, the monthly running costs geometrically increase or you will be required to upgrade your equipment to support a higher order modulation to keep the costs competitive. Likewise, some operators may optimize their connectivity plans to fit large subscribers' requirements and the costs would be quite prohibitive if you're starting small to grow the business with time. And finally, teleports are limited to particular geographical location and the uplinking capabilities of their antennas. That additionally diversifies the ability to offer a service by the geographical area of the remote customers. All this makes the task to find a truly cost-effective dedicated satellite Internet connectivity a rather difficult task.
Once you will be evaluating BusinessCom DBC service as your primary or a backup satellite Internet backbone, our engineers will work with you individually to determine the most optimal configuration of a remote equipment and service package. The premium quality and customer satisfaction of every BusinessCom DBC circuit deployed builds on the following key moments:
- Individual, custom tailored approach
- Large network of ground-based teleport facilities
- High-powered satellite choice - with optimal circuit spectral efficiency and EOL time
- 1st Tier, highly redundant terrestrial peering via multiple backbones with no oversubscribtion
- High remote equipment scalability to address future customer's business growth
- Strong SLA (Service Level Agreement) at fixed monthly costs
- Reliable time-proven platforms (SCPC, DVB, DVB-S2, iSCPC and Frame Relay over Satellite)
- 24/7 technical support
- Value-add BusinessCom TES-1000 bandwidth management and IP Telephony services
>> If you are interested to inquire how BusinessCom DBC solutions can , please contact us via e-mail
>>
or call
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Choosing the right solution
With BusinessCom DBC you are not limited to a particular ground-based facility and the range of it's capabilities as BusinessCom works with a number of teleports around the world, including the largest Telekom Austria and Telenor, thus covering the whole geostationary orbit from East to West. That includes United States (East Coast and Hawaii), United Kingdom, Austria, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Russia and Hong Kong - for customers requiring the best peering to Western and Eastern parts of the Internet. All the uplinking stations have been certified to meet the highest levels of BusinessCom DBC quality standard.
The choice of the satellites currently (last Q of 2007) includes 19 spacecrafts on the geostationary orbit operating in Ku- and C-Band, operated by Eutelsat, RSCC, Loral Skynet, Lockheed Martin, SES/NewSkies, Intelsat and Arabsat. Depending on the rain fade margins at the remote location of the customer, we propose connecting to a particular spacecraft in our fleet, to assure SLA guaranteed annual network uptime, throughput rates and other service level agreement parameters are met all the time.
Spectral Efficiency In the VSAT world, the amount of IP data the system can pass per a given satellite space segment bandwidth is called spectral efficiency. As the cost of the space segment forms the largest part of the service package retail price, spectral efficiency plays an incredible role and the network operator has to apply all the best efforts to maximize the link efficiency. For example, a standard 2 bits per symbol QPSK modulation used in satellite communications since 90's is still being widely offered today, offering 0.96 to 1.9 bits/Hz performance, depending on the FEC rate and codec chosen. Almost any SCPC and DVB modem you find supports QPSK, such as Datum Systems PSM series, Comtech EF Data CDM, iDirect NetModem and Infiniti and others.
A typical QPSK circuit with 3/4 TPC delivers 1.5 bits/Hz spectral efficiency. BusinessCom DBC services can work at up to 8PSK at 0.95 TPC FEC, running at up to 2.85 bits/Hz, offering nearly two times more throughput rates while running at the same cost (diagram source Comtech EF Data "New Forward Error Correction and
Modulation Technologies", 2005): 
Once the circuit is set to operate at 8PSK modulation, the antenna and transmitter requirements grow both at the teleport and remote location, so the more spectral efficiency is, the more power is actually required to support the carrier. A very typical and rough indicative example would be a requirement of 1.8m antenna and 2W BUC for the QPSK and 2.4m antenna and 4W BUC for the 8PSK carrier of the same size, although real numbers vary depending on the satellite coverage, teleport-side antenna diameter, HPA, carrier sizes, etc. For lower bandwidth cases, where remote equipment costs dominate, BusinessCom still supports and offers QPSK because it allows to use smaller antennas and less expensive transmitters at the remote side.
When it comes to service an ISP, a VoIP carrier or a large network with high throughput requirements, 8PSK is usually more preferrable as DBC services are designed the way that remote VSAT equipment costs are justified within a few months after the start. For some particular cases, especially if most of the transfer is being IP data, BusinessCom recommends a DVB-S2 based 8PSK downlinks, running at 9/10 LDPC FEC codec that is almost hitting the limits of physics in terms of spectral efficiency. Each DBC inquiry case is thoroughly studied by our engineers to offer the most competitive solution with total ownership cost and customer's business in mind. Additionally, it is worth to mention that for 8PSK-based circuits, BusinessCom usually involves the latest developments in satellite spacecraft construction - very high powered transponders to bring the remote equipment requirements down. The space segment capacity on such new satellites is more expensive, however, in conjuction with DVB-S2 technology, the combination of high spectral efficiency and high power yields a unique balance of scalability, reliability and cost. Such an example could be an ability to receive up to 52 Mbit/s and transmit up to 2 Mbit/s on a relatively small 1.8m antenna and 4W BUC from the peak of our Middle East contour.
Equipment Platform
Once the spacecraft and modulation choice is known, BusinessCom recommends a particular technological platform to deploy dedicated VSAT links to it's customers. Currently DBC standards involve a mix of SCPC, DVB, DVB-S2, iSCPC and Frame Relay over Satellite technologies, each having it's own advantages and disadvantages like anything else in this world. The benefit of using BusinessCom's DBC link comes from that you are not limited to a single technology of a single teleport. Rather that fitting your requirements to the teleport's technological abilities and infrastructure, BusinessCom fits multiple teleports abilities to your own demands. By working with each customer on an individual basis and understanding what applications are being used, the following recommendations are usually given:
SCPC (Single Channel Per Carrier) and iSCPC - one of the oldest dedicated connectivity technologies still highly efficient enough to be offered today: a traditional connectivity method where only a single circuit, be it Rx or Tx, can occupy a dedicated frequency space carrier on the satellite transponder. The main benefit of SCPC is the ability to use a wide choice of FEC codecs and modulation types, including Turbo Product Codes (TPC) and, in some cases, LDPC. With BusinessCom DBC services, like on other dedicated connectivity solutions, SCPC technology is mainly used for uplinks as this offers jitterless and dedicated point-to-point link between the remote and the teleport. The effectiveness - price/performance of an SCPC uplink directly depends on the spectral efficiency. If SCPC is operated on both the uplink and downlink in a so called Full Duplex SCPC scenario, this offers the end customer to deploy a CRTP router to compress the RTP headers of voice traffic. RTP compression allows almost to double the amount of VoIP channels a dedicated link can support. An iSCPC technology developed by iDirect that is being actively used within some of BusinessCom DBC links, has RTP compressor built-in in the iDirect modems, maximizing our customer's profits for carrying VoIP traffic.
DVB, DVB-S2 and Frame Relay over Satellite - usually applied to carry IP data traffic on the downlinks from teleport to VSAT remotes and, in many cases, broadcasting applications, including satellite TV and offline file downloads. DVB and DLCI based technologies are based on multiple channels per carriers principle (MCPC) - many remote downlink channels sharing the same carrier on the transponder. As DVB allows the teleport to drop guard bands required to secure SCPC carriers on the transponder, DVB technology offers particlar space segment savings that allow to deliver a better cost per bit versus traditional SCPC. Usually this results in up to 20% savings versus SCPC costs. The reason why this technology is rarely used on uplinks instead of SCPC is that if a relatively large uplink bandwidth carrier has to be formed, all the remotes will need to have antennas and transmitters large enough to support the whole carrier independently on their quota inside that pool. This would make the remote equipment cost quite prohibitive.
It is also very import to notice that such MCPC technologies like DVB support TDMA bandwidth sharing. This allows network operator to oversubscribe their downlink pool, unfortunately leaving it's performance to the mercy of statistics. In many cases, DVB-based downlinks are used to deliver shared services (like ViaSat LinkStar based networks and one-way DVB/IP links), however if the size of the DVB bandwidth pool equals the sum of all it's downlink channels, such a solution will deliver truly dedicated service to every customer. We know that some network operators today offer unrealistic costs for their downlink bandwidth offers by hiddenly proposing an oversubscribed downlink service. A very easy test to determine if the downlink is oversubscribed is to check the price of the DVB downlink offer and the SCPC uplink offer. If modulation and FEC are the same, in most of the cases the cost should differ by 15-20% at maximum with the DVB being less expensive. That is because space segment costs are exactly the same and do not depend on the type of the link - be it SCPC or DVB. If the the downlink price differs more, that is most probably an oversubscribed circuit that is not going to offer 100% CIR all the time. Unfortunately there are no other real tests to know if DVB pool of a particular network operator is oversubscribed before you buy.
With a BusinessCom DBC service, you are guaranteed to purchase 100% CIR circuit within the DVB and DVB-S2 downlinks. The throughput rates, maximal packet loss and transit delays are all the part of standard BusinessCom Service Level Agreement that builds our guarantees.
>> If you are interested to inquire how BusinessCom DBC solutions can , please contact us via e-mail
>> or call +38 056 788 3544 |
