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This new European Ka band satellite internet access service is called Tooway ™ and is a service provided by Eutelsat via their teleport operator agent Skylogic in Italy. It will help make use of the Ka band transponder payload capacity on the Hotbird 6 satellite at 13 deg east longitude and is intended to provide a cost effective solution to the problem of providing satellite internet access for people in remote areas who cannot get ADSL or cable broadband.  The service will be very similar to Wildblue/Telesat service that has been provided in the US and Canada for several years with great success. 

Tooway™ is intended to provide satellite internet access for domestic and small business customers in remote locations in Europe within the beam coverages shown. The downlink is a single broad beam covering Europe. The uplink comprises several smaller Ka band spot beams to obtain higher uplink G/T and thus permit lower transmit eirp from the small earth stations.

Contact click >  sales@bentleywalker.com 

Advanced coding/modulation and dynamic rain fade mitigation techniques are used to minimise outages during heavy rain. The return links and capacity are dynamically assigned to make best use of the satellite capacity available. A variety of peak speeds are offered with corresponding tariffs. The system incorporates an integrated performance enhancing proxy (PEP) with pre-fetch to speed up browsing and downloads.

Ka band frequency plan on HotBird 6 satellite showing downlink transponder and uplink spot beam transponders.
Note the beacon frequency is 19701 MHz, Horizontal nominal polarisation.
It is not known if this 'Horizontal' is in fact parallel with the equator or tilted 3.5 deg.

All Spanish and French terminals receive the same downstream that is the French one as downlink coverage is the same for both K153 (Spanish) and K159 (French) transponder.  The difference is that Spanish terminals will transmit on K153 while French ones will transmit on K159 as the uplink has a different coverage.

It is a pity that Eutelsat are not using circular polarisation (as used for Wildblue) as that would have made a big difference to the mass market installation problem by eliminating the need for skilled installers. Tooway satellite installers wanted.

For dish pointing for these satellites go to Tooway dish pointing  Satellite dish pointing UK  Germany  Spain  France   Algeria   Greece   Italia

Future plans by Eutelsat are for a dedicated Ka band satellite, called KA_SAT.  This will have multiple Ka band spot beams and cover Europe in a more comprehensive fashion.  Launch date proposed: late 2010 (to be updated)

From 1st July 2009 the speed of the Tooway satellite broadband service will be increased to (up to) 3.6 Mbps from (up to) 2 Mbps. Maximum uplink speeds have also increased to 384 kbps for all customers. In addition, overnight usage (FAP) volumes will be discounted by 50% between midnight and 6am GMT to reward use of the satellite network at times of traditional low usage. Following launch of KA-SAT satellite later in 2010, satellite broadband speeds are expected to be raised to up to 10Mbps.

Back for Tooway ™ satellite discussion forum.    European VSAT satellite service providers  European resellers are Swisscom and Bentley Walker and El Molino

Other relevant links:  Skylogic Tooway ™ brochure 5.4 Mbytes pdf file       Eutelsat/ViaSat press release 46 kbytes pdf file.

Page started 31 Jan 2008.   Page last amended 15 Oct 2009