I can change the carrier

Does your provider have other networks populated on the hub?  Same beam coverage/spacecraft? 

I think your question needs to be addressed with your provider.  Only they can tell you what networks they have, the minimum RFT requirements for those networks, and what the service plans look like for those networks.

A simplified star network is illustrated above, involving 3 remotes.

The large teleport hub transmits a continuous download carrier (red) to all the remotes.  Within this carrier are packets of data intended for each remote site.

The remote sites transmit intermittent short bursts of data, interleaved in time, and these bursts are received by the hub, using one receiver.   If you have 10 customers then you might put all 10 on the same return link.  On average, each remote can transmit for less than 10% of the time.  It is possible to have several return links, in which case there will be multiple return link burst receivers at the hub.  A star network has a large hub dish and small remotes.


Mesh networking (illustrated above) allows direct communications from one remote site to another.  The dish sizes all need to be larger and similar in size.

Assuming SCPC (continuous carrier) operation, each site will need one modulator and two receivers.  More complex systems are possible with dynamically demand assigned carriers, set up just for brief periods when one site needs to call another.  Such networks are called mesh DAMA (Demand Assigned Multiple Assess).  A pool of frequency is used and as traffic demand requires carriers are created and removed.  For example for a phone call or large file transfer.  This required that one of the sites acts as a controller hub to manage the spectrum and instruct remote sites to change transmit and receive carrier frequencies and capacities at a moments notice.  An overlay low capacity star network may be used to do this, giving the hub a low bit rate management control of all remotes.  If remote sites have minimal equipment, just one transmitter and one receiver then during mesh operation they are lost from the network control and must retune back to the hub immediately once thier site to site communication is finished.

Direct mesh connection improves the quality of phone calls, as it avoids double hop delay.  The penalty is more equipment and expense.  DAMA needs a lot of management effort.  Dedicated SCPC mesh networks, with many small carriers, are difficult to fill efficiently, but do provide a simple, very reliable, high quality solution that does not depend on real time managment supervision.

Best regards, Eric

thank you for Eric  and TDMAMike for this clarification