VSAT services from Blue Sky Satellite Communications (Kenya and Southern Africa)

Blue Sky Satellite Comunication are based in Johannesburg, South Africa, and have been involved in providing satellite services in Africa for the past 8 years.

Fixed VSAT dish: Broadband internet connection

The capacity you need and the monthly charges will depend on your application. The least expensive will be a VSAT for a single PC user. The most expensive will be a VSAT used to to provide internet trunking connection for a medium sized town ISP with hundreds of PCs, VoIP phones and base cell phone site included.

For home use, small business and internet cafe operations iDirect  technology is offered in the Kenya area, plus ViaSat LinkStar throughout southern Africa. Tell Blue Sky where you are and how many PCs you want to connect and how many VoIP phones, and seek their advice as to the appropriate bit rates and sharing ratios to use.

In the coverage maps to the right iDirect service is offered in a high power and high sensitivity Ku band spot beam pointed at Kenya from the Intelsat 802 satellite at 33 deg east longitude.   the downlink frequency into the indoor iDirect receiver is 1129.6 MHz.

The middle coverage map shows the coverage of the whole of southern Africa using the Eutelsat W3A Africa beam. The service comes from the Eutelsat Skylogic (Viasat Linkstar) VSAT hub is located in the European beam where it is connected to the world internet terrestrial trunk system.  The beam is cross strapped on the satellite so that two transponders are in use - one each way.  Downlink frequency to Africa is 1120.75 MHz (into the LinkStar box)

The corresponding European coverage beam is shown below.   For more information about how this works see here: http://www.satsig.net/w3a-europe-africa.htm

Large business, town ISP or large corporate

For large business or ISP operations dedicated satellite capacity is appropriate and the technology offered for this is DVB outlink and SCPC type modem for your return link.  If the DVB capacity is dedicated to you [prices for the satellite capacity are much higher but the service is such that any congestion will be under your own control.  Point to point linking is also possible and for this larger dishs are preferred at both ends, such as 2.4m diameter.

Portable and satellite phones / laptop sized satellite internet terminals.

More portable solutions are offered by the Thuraya, Inmarsat and Iridium satellite networks. These include Hughes, SO-2520, SO-2510, Iridium 9505A and Nera Worldphone.  Laptop sized internet terminals include Explorer 500 BGAN, REGIONAL BGAN, HNS 9201 BGAN and Worldpro 1000 BGAN.

 Contact details:
E-mail: info@blueskysat.com         Web: http://www.blueskysat.com/
Tel: (+27 11) 432 0075 or  0860 181920
 

C-band circular polarisation VSAT dish

C-band circular polarisation feed assembly
 

Note the square tube behind the feed horn.  This square tube is the polariser and has two rows of pins inside.  It may be attached at two alternative 90 deg positions (for left hand LHCP or right hand RHCP circular reception)  to the OMT junction which is in the centre of the picture.  The receive LNB, at the bottom, is joined to the OMT via a transmit reject filter.  The C band transmit BUC is on the lower left.  Note that the entire feed assembly does not need to be adjusted in rotation. Its function as either a RHCP or LHCP receive depends on the way you bolt the polariser to the OMT.  If you get no receive signal try undoing the 8 bolts and trying it the other way. 

Patriot Ku band dish

Channelmaster Ku band VSAT dish

Satellite

L-band IF carrier frequency

VSAT technology

Here are some technical details about Blue Sky Satellite Communications services showing the satellites, carrier frequencies and the VSAT technologies used.

Blue Sky are a Virtual Network Operator (VNO) with direct control of their iDirect VSAT hubs on IS-802 and IS-10-02