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Blog 'sat' » Hughes Nails OTA Spaceway Testing

As read on www.skyreports.com

Satellite solution company Hughes Network Systems completed a 30-day program of over-the-air testing of the broadband IP capabilities of DirecTV's Spaceway 2 satellite. The Spaceway 3 satellite, owned by Hughes, will be used to deliver a range of HughesNet broadband IP services to enterprise, government, and consumer/small business customers.

The Spaceway system was designed and developed by Hughes as a next-generation, Ka-band broadband satellite system, the world's first to employ on-board traffic switching and routing capability, the company said. Combined with other advances in satellite technology - like 10 Gbps capacity, fast packet switching, and spot beam forming - the Spaceway 3 satellite will deliver new bandwidth-on-demand services, with true peer-to-peer, single-hop networking of high-performance ground terminals.

According to the company, over-the-air testing has given Hughes the opportunity to verify and integrate hardware and software in preparation for Spaceway 3's launch - scheduled for early 2007 - with commercial service planned later in the year. Hughes was able to conduct performance tests in the areas of transmission, user traffic stability and reliability, air interface protocols, user network interfaces, and back-end systems for billing and customer service.

The successful completion of these tests validated the Spaceway design, large-scale software development, and custom ASIC and hardware development for small format terminals, the company said.

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