Technical and economic impact of the use of standard-B earth stations in the Intelsat system

More than 20 years after the Intelsat system started up, satellite technology developments have led to considerable changes in the world-wide international satellite transmission system. This evolution and the present capabilities offered by digital technologies make it possible to reassess the potential cost advantages of standard-B earth stations over a wider portion of international telephone transmission routes. This paper addresses the technical and economic issues raised by the characteristics of the present and planned Intelsat satellites, together with the current capabilities of digital techniques (forward error correction, low rate encoding, time and frequency division multiple access). The foreseeable impact of the use of such techniques on overall satellite telephone transmission costs is also presented, and compared with that forecasted for fiber optic cable circuits.