Looking to the Future of Satellite Bandwith Procurement
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Satellite industry executives debate the successor to the
DISN satellite transmission services-global contract.
CapRock
Meeting Next Generation Government SATCOM Needs with a New Breed of Provider
by David Myers
There has been dramatic change since the government first expanded its access to commercial satellite communications through a new contract vehicle in 2001, known as Defense Information Systems Network Satellite Transmission Services- Global (DSTS-G). In addition to increased reliance on commercial satellite communications, the government has become significantly more sophisticated in its application of commercial satellite services. Driven by higher throughput, communications on the move (COTM) missions and new technologies, the government is no longer simply interested in satellite capacity, but rather advanced, cost-effective communications solutions.
In the face of this changing dynamic, the next generation of SATCOM solutions and their procurement model will need to evolve. Satellite fleet-centric thinking and bandwidth intermediaries will no longer suffice. Meeting the government’s emerging requirements for satellite communications will require a more complete value-added service provider, capable of not just procuring components, but also of designing, implementing, owning and operating sophisticated end-to-end managed network solutions.
Today’s missions require high-performance converged communications to support multi-line voice, encrypted broadband data and two-way video applications. Historically, commercial satellite fleet operators have promoted buying satellite capacity in Megahertz (MHz) or in fractions of satellite transponders, as these are the common units of measure tracked by their shareholders. But in-theater personnel think in terms of their mission applications, which run on megabits per second (Mbps) rather than MHz.
Like their government clients, managed satellite service providers, who own and operate satellite networks, are driven by the constant desire to improve application performance, while simultaneously lowering the “cost per bit.” In recent years, the tightening supply and increasing prices of commercial space segment have required service providers to become experts in network optimization and application acceleration. The goal is to deliver the same bandwidth, data throughput and quality of service, using less satellite capacity.
Along with maximizing the “bits per hertz” ratio, providing value-added solutions to government and commercial clients alike has required mastering the application environment. Ensuring that Voice over Internet Protocol telephone services perform without dropped calls or lost packets, or that data is kept secure and meets information assurance standards, has exceeded the “raw bandwidth” requirement as the most important aspect of providing SATCOM-enabled communications.
Multi-theater missions also require government SATCOM solutions to be multi-band in nature, capable of moving from C to Ku to X to Ka and back again without loss of performance. For managed satellite service providers, offering this kind of seamless portable communications, moving across regions or even across different satellite fleets, is second nature.
Commercial managed service providers have been offering bandwidth portability and satellite fleet diversity for clients in the offshore energy and transoceanic shipping markets for nearly 30 years. It is this expertise in delivering true end-to-end satellite solutions, down to the application layer, that the government will need to leverage in providing the next generation of satellite-based communications solutions.
MANAGED SERVICES
Complex military deployments, such as UAVs and man-packable micro terminals, have created huge demand for bandwidth not initially forecast by industry or government. One standard practice in commercial industry is providing a fully managed service rather than procuring raw satellite capacity or components. Managed services often include providing every aspect of a solution from end to end, including satellite bandwidth, teleport services, terrestrial interconnects, on-site antenna systems, and even LAN components like IP phones, PCs and video conferencing equipment.
The scale advantage of managed services over one-off networks drives more efficient use of limited space segment, improving the “bits per hertz” ratio. It also ensures a fully integrated solution, where all the individual components are designed to work in concert. Adapting managed services for government results in a true “win-win” scenario.
The key to realizing the benefits of these performance-enhancing and cost-saving services is the quality and operation of the network. In recent years, there has been a shift within the military to rely increasingly on contractors to operate many of its missioncritical systems. However, most contractors have elected to forego investment in their own infrastructure, instead outsourcing the services that they provide to multiple third parties.
These “virtual network operators” often face serious qualitycontrol issues due to the hands-off approach and lack of visibility into the daily operations of the network. Virtual network operators generally cannot implement the latest bandwidth optimization tools because they don’t own or control the infrastructure. Many lack the in-house expertise to configure or manage sophisticated remote terminal equipment, like maritime or COTM antennas. And since virtual operators are often several layers removed from the actual network, they are challenged to provide consistent levels of responsive customer service.
Overcoming these challenges requires only that the client select an end-to-end satellite service provider who is facilities based—a provider already invested in and operating its own global infrastructure. By partnering with a systems integrator that owns and operates the network service (including multiple 24 x 7 teleports, network operations centers, in-theater support centers, a global terrestrial backbone, and cleared in-field personnel), the Department of Defense ensures better command, control and communications support for its missions.
In addition to offering a purpose-built network infrastructure, the more established managed satellite service providers can also offer the latest in specialized government-only commercial space segment, such as X band and military Ka band.
These specialized frequencies have little or no commercial application, so the major satellite fleet operators have shied away from investing in these payloads. Commercial X and Ka offer a number of advantages over traditional C and Ku bands. For one, they are both still relatively available, unlike severely constrained C and Ku. Secondly, with commercial satellite fleets operating above their original design parameters (often at 95 percent or higher utilization), mission-impacting interference has become an increasing problem. As specialized governmentonly frequencies, X and military Ka are far less susceptible to such interference issues.
Given these advantages and the inherent benefit of a “mirror” commercial capability to the WGS fleet, CapRock believes that the next generation of commercial SATCOM solutions will be more driven by government-specific rather than adapted commercial technologies. To that end, the company has significantly expanded its existing global infrastructure to support X and military Ka teleport equipment and satellite capacity. CapRock Government Solutions currently has more experience than any other service provider in commercial X band SATCOM services to the U.S. government, with more than 200 MHz in operation.
NEW FULFILLMENT MODEL
The original DSTS-G vehicle was designed as a small business contract, awarded to three prime contractors—Arrowhead Global Solutions (now CapRock Government Solutions), Artel and Spacelink (now DRS). At that time, nearly 10 years ago, the vast supply of commercial satellite capacity available and the need to ensure competitive pricing enabled the government to benefit from a “broker” model. Under this approach, the prime contractors served as intermediaries to design the satellite capacity solution to meet specific task order requirements and procure the capacity from across various satellite fleet operators. In addition to design and procurement, the original DSTS-G primes often found ways to lower the government’s operational costs by designing solutions that would consume less satellite power, while delivering the same throughput.
In today’s new climate, with extremely tight capacity and skyrocketing satellite fleet operator prices, CapRock Government Solutions began to see a need for a more comprehensive approach to providing SATCOM services for DoD. Advanced bandwidth management concepts, including bandwidth portability and satellite fleet diversity, were developed to help ensure worldwide deployable capacity, and to mitigate the operational risks associated with having a government network dependent upon any one single satellite fleet operator or spacecraft type.
Over time, close interaction with government customers and end-users became essential components of commercial SATCOM success. CapRock worked diligently to track customer bandwidth utilization, trends and inventory, and to develop network optimization tools. This has enabled the company to make informed decisions about the build-out of its network infrastructure, launch of new products and services, and acquisition of government-specific satellite frequencies (X and Ka). All of this investment has been designed to pre-position services on behalf of government clients, so they will be available when needed.
The key for the government to reap both the lessons learned from the DSTS-G experience, and the latest in commercial satellite solutions, will be selecting the right type of service providers. The government will want to look to end-to-end managed satellite service providers that have the same incentives for success as their customers. Like its government clients, CapRock Government Solutions has evolved and invested toward one goal—ensuring mission success, while simultaneously improving operational capabilities and cost effectiveness. ♦
David Myers is executive vice president and general manager for CapRock Government Solutions.
Americom
Acquiring Commercial Satellite Communications to Meet DoD's Requirements
by Tip Osterthaler
As the U.S. government considers how it will acquire future capacity on commercial satellites, it is clear that the stakes are high for both the government and the satellite communications industry. Unfortunately, much of the public discussion to date has centered on the competing views of the satellite operators and the resellerintegrators. There has been far too little objective examination of what commercial capacity the U.S. government is likely to need in the future and how that capacity can best be acquired at acceptable levels of risk and at reasonable cost.
The reality today is that the U.S. government is a large user of commercial capacity, and that situation is unlikely to change over the next several years. However, the degree to which the commercial operators will be able to meet the needs of the government beyond 2010 will be heavily influenced by the acquisition strategy the government pursues. It is likely that the scope of the government’s needs will include both raw bandwidth to support existing and planned applications and a wide range of services such as network design, traffic management, and equipment procurement and integration.
Given such a broad set of requirements, it would seem that the government would benefit from an acquisition approach that provides for easy access to both operators and integrators. Having said that, the question remains regarding the degree to which the operators will be postured to provide the needed capacity.
One of the challenges for the commercial satellite owner-operators in today’s procurement environment is the lack of a direct business dialogue with government end users. For those in the satellite operating companies who focus on satisfying the needs of the U.S. government, this poses a daunting challenge. In the absence of an open dialogue with the government and the ability to establish a direct contractual relationship, government needs do not get the attention they deserve in corporate boardrooms where customer priorities are set and resources are allocated.
If this situation is allowed to persist, the likely result is that the needs of commercial users will continue to drive investment decisions. If it turns out that commercial customer needs are consistent with the government’s requirements and the owner-operators misjudge the market and launch excess capacity, the U.S. government might get lucky and still find adequate capacity at a reasonable price. However, this would seem to be an unnecessarily risky approach.
If, on the other hand, the government adopts an acquisition strategy that includes the ability to purchase directly from the owner-operators as well as from integrator-resellers, depending on the requirements, the government will probably find that the owneroperators are much more willing to respond to their specific requirements when they make investment decisions.
The availability of commercial capacity is simply too important to be left to chance. While the U.S. government is a very important customer for the satellite operators, it still only consumes a small percentage of total global commercial bandwidth, so the key to ensuring access in the future is to engage the owner-operators directly and to ensure that they have a complete understanding of the government’s needs as well as incentives to invest on its behalf, as they now do with their large commercial customers.
Let’s get this discussion back to how industry can best support government users and away from what is best for the individual private sector players. In the end, the scope of the government’s requirements are such that there is room for both integrators and operators to be successful, and the government should pursue a strategy that ensures they get the best efforts of both. ♦
Tip Osterthaler is president and chief executive officer of SES Americom Government Services.
Artel
Commercial SATCOM Acquisition
by Abdul Rana
U.S. military use of satellite communications has grown exponentially over the past decade, through both the extended utilization of military satellites and an unprecedented expansion in the use of commercial satellite capacity. The Department of Defense has been able to capitalize on a period of low utilization of commercial systems, so that currently, 80 percent of the satellite capacity used by DoD is leased from commercial systems.
The main reason the department has been able to acquire the reasonably priced bandwidth is the effectiveness of the Defense Information Systems Network (DISN) Satellite Transmission Services-Global (DSTSG) contract. The DSTS-G contract vehicle efficiently provides the military with bandwidth capacity on commercial communications satellites. DoD in 2001 competitively awarded three 10-year delivery order contracts with a $2.1 billion ceiling to qualified small businesses: Artel, Spacelink International (now DRS Technologies), and Arrowhead Space & Telecommunications (now CapRock Communications).
A key feature of this arrangement is that for each delivery task order, these three primes compete work among satellite carriers, and then compete against each other, resulting in more than 32 percent savings in program budget to date and enhanced service delivery. DSTS-G provides a contractual vehicle for DoD, federal agencies and other users authorized by DoD to obtain global fixed satellite service (FSS) bandwidth and related satellite-based services and applications. The list of services includes satellite bandwidth, service management, earth terminal services, leased earth terminal operation, and maintenance services, commercial teleport services and all necessary U.S. and foreign bandwidth and terminal licenses and approvals.
The list also includes optional terrestrial interconnection services, optional host nation agreement negotiating support and optional systems engineering support. In addition, DSTS-G provides a contractual vehicle for the government to optionally acquire terminals on an ownership basis. The contract services support fixed, transportable and mobile user terminals.
DISA manages the DSTS-G contract and coordinates the space segment acquisition for DoD. The contract has been extremely effective in reducing the cost and enhancing the delivery of services to DoD through a two-tiered competition strategy. Three DSTS-G contractors first allow satellite operators to compete for the lowest cost, best solution possible. Then the contractors compete among themselves to win the business.
A 2006 Government Accountability Office report concluded that the DSTS-G contract was working well and provided DoD satellite capacity at a cost roughly 30 percent below other approaches, such as the prior contract or DoD agencies purchasing bandwidth directly from satellite operators.
ENHANCEMENTS
Several enhancements were added to the contract in 2007, which made the contract vehicle even more useful, to the extent that it is now one of DISA’s most successful contract vehicles. Major enhancements included:
Timeliness. The improvement in processes has shortened taskorder response times from approximately four weeks to an average of three days, and has cut service delivery from an average of six weeks to an average of three days. In times of extreme need, the primes have been able to establish a signal in a matter of hours.
NetOps. Several enhancements were added to improve NetOps and situational awareness. Signal parameters are monitored in real time and reported, on an as-changed basis, the planned and actual signal parameter values for each provisioned service. The out-of-tolerance alarm conditions are reported to the Global Netops Center when spectral measurements no longer fall within the nominal range assigned to predicted signal values, and also reported when each out-of-tolerance alarm has been cleared.
There is also requirement for EMI/RFI identification, characterization, and geo-location for services procured under DSTS-G. Such services include the ability to identify and characterize sub-carrier EMI/RFI being transmitted underneath an authorized carrier, and the ability to geo-locate the source of any and all EMI/RFI. The existence of EMI/RFI is immediately reported to the Global SATCOM Support Center and other stake holders for each task order. Additionally, best efforts are made to geo-locate the source of the interference and report findings in accordance with USSTRATCOM guidance.
Information Assurance. Commercial satellite communications services are vital critical infrastructure that must be protected from intentional or accidental attacks. DoD issued guidelines in the spring of 2008 to accompany each task order response by a statement that identifies the security measures in place. The measures are categorized by a Mission Assurance Category or MAC level, rated from 1, most restrictive, to 3, least restrictive.
These MAC levels are applied to the four main components of the information signal train, which are the remote station, network, teleport, and satellite command and control system. DISA has promulgated minimum MAC level requirements for service offerings on the DSTS-G contract, consistent with DoD Directive 8500.1 and DoD Instruction 8500.2.
SERVING THE WARFIGHTER
Prior to September 11, 2001, there was an overabundance of commercial satellite bandwidth availability. Since that time, however, capacity has been stressed by the global war on terror, requirements from global news and media outlets, and the growth of digital television transmission. For example, commercial bandwidth has become increasingly scarce in Southwest Asia, and there are also extreme shortages of satellite capacity in both the Middle East and North Africa.
While the availability of commercial satellite bandwidth is decreasing, the military’s need for affordable bandwidth continues to grow. New warfighter initiatives are constantly being identified, and there is more widespread use of UAVs, which consume vast amounts of bandwidth.
The shortage of bandwidth and other challenges continues to enhance the role of systems integrators, like the DSTS-G primes. The use of commercial bandwidth for military applications requires real-time monitoring, interference detection and geo-location, and information assurance to ensure the availability of interference-free bandwidth for mission-critical applications. DSTS-G primes are performing these functions with the use of cleared, experienced personnel.
Over the last few years, the satellite industry has been pushed out to foreign ownership. The anonymity and security of DoD operations are critical to mission success. Integrators mitigate this risk by inserting themselves between the satellite operators and the government. The integrators are satellite agnostic and able to provide end-to-end services as defined by service level agreements. The integrators seek capacity and other resources such as teleport services and backhauls from multiple U.S. and foreign companies, and provide trusted services to the government.
There is an argument that DoD needs to be able to make longer term commitments for satellite usage, and that the year-to-year requirement forces the industry to charge higher rates than would be the case if they could order for a longer period. However, an integrator will be able to provide services to DoD under the current paradigm by absorbing the risk of acquiring services for longer term. This is equivalent to offering multi-year pricing without long-term commitment by the government, which can buy what it needs, where it needs it, and when it needs it without multi-year commitments.
Congress inserted language into the 2008 defense authorization bill specifically requesting that DoD re-investigate the issue of utilizing commercial satellite bandwidth for military purposes, and report back to Congress no later than February 2010. As lawmakers await the report, the DSTS-G contract is serving the warfighters well. The systems integrators continue to provide a valuable role by allowing:
• Flexibility: Through the DSTS-G contract, the primes have been able to provide commercial satellite bandwidth, bandwidth and service management, terminal services, terminal operation and maintenance services (including health-andstatus monitoring), commercial teleport services, licensing and approvals, host-nation agreements, and related services.
• Innovation: Systems integrators have provided solutions that the government was not even aware of prior to the proposals. These have included preferential pricing and terms and conditions from satellite operators, and moving satellites where they were needed.
• Cost Reduction: Systems integrators have no interest in promoting a specific space segment and/or modulation/ coding scheme, and are able to recommend the best design and most suitable space and ground segments.
As DoD’s requirements have evolved from bandwidth to services, Artel has invested heavily and enhanced its capabilities as an end-to-end solutions integrator with three NOCs, and monitoring and connectivity infrastructure in 22 locations worldwide. Artel has organically grown through excellent performance and is anticipating 2009 revenues of $270 million. With strong competencies in managed network services, information assurance and IT solutions, Artel is well prepared to meet the future needs of the warfighter. ♦
Abdul Rana is vice president of strategic operations for Artel.
Intelsat
The Evolution of Satellite Bandwith Procurement
by Kay Sears
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Almost a decade ago, the Department of Defense wanted to streamline the procurement process for commercial satellite bandwidth used by sea, air and land forces worldwide. Rather than continue to shop for needed satellite capacity from a variety of suppliers, the Pentagon decided to consolidate its requirements in a contract granted to three small businesses.
These small businesses would act as middlemen, assembling packages of bandwidth and services as required by military forces and reducing the procurement burden on the services. In addition, this approach would significantly contribute to DoD small business goals. So why not kill two birds with one stone?
Thus was born the Defense Information Systems Network Satellite Transmission Services-Global (DSTS-G) contract vehicle. The DSTS-G small business model worked well enough initially, and probably saved the government money during a period where there was a significant oversupply of bandwidth. The Internet bubble burst shortly before the DSTS-G contract was granted, so in the early years, it was a buyer’s market. The three small DSTS-G companies were able to make price the discriminator as they shopped among operators and suppliers to meet military bandwidth requests.
As the global economy revived, however, video transmissions migrated to the more bandwidth-hungry HD format, and militaries began to use satellite communications more aggressively in their operations. As a result, the available pool of satellite capacity diminished and the prices began to rise.
Because the government chose to rely on one-year contracts, it was uniquely exposed to this normal fluctuation of supply and demand. Had the government chosen to plan in advance and to use its existing contract authority to employ long-term contracts, it could have significantly reduced the cost of its required bandwidth. In addition, the use of long-term contracts would have encouraged the private sector to plan additional capacity in key regions and to tailor this capacity to the unique needs of the military.
The DSTS-G contract, designed initially as a way to manage an unruly marketplace, ended up inhibiting the normal ability of the market to respond to changes in supply and demand.
The world has changed dramatically since the DSTS-G process began in 2001. The economies of Africa and the Middle East have grown aggressively and are making substantial demands on commercial satellite capacity. At the same time, the American military is engaged in large, ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, resulting in a tremendous increase in bandwidth demand in the Indian Ocean Region.
In addition, militaries around the world are turning to new bandwidth-hungry tools, such as UAVs, and new mobile communication platforms to meet new operational requirements. Finally, the line between commercial and military demand has blurred as militaries increasingly turn to novel approaches such as hosting military payloads on commercial satellites.
The DSTS-G contracting process is up for renewal in 2011, and it is time for another evolution in how the military buys the commercial bandwidth it needs.
What is needed now is a combination of a DSTS-G-like arrangement for selected integrated services and a separate contract process for multi-year bandwidth capacity where the military integrates its worldwide strategy and satellite architecture requirements with longterm planning and line-item budgeting. This would save the military money in the long run, introduce new flexibility into operations, and allow commercial operators to plan and design payloads suited to meet DoD requirements.
The recent move by the Australian Defence Forces (ADF) to contract for a UHF hosted payload on an upcoming Intelsat satellite is an example of how this process could work for the U.S. military. The ADF signed a 15-year contract for a portion of the UHF payload that will be launched on the Intelsat 22 satellite in 2012.
Not only does this guarantee that the ADF will have the communications capacity it needs in the Indian Ocean region through 2027, but it also allows Intelsat to design and build capacity in advance of when it is needed. ADF officials estimate that signing a 15-year contract, rather than buying bandwidth on an as-needed basis, will save Australian taxpayers more than $100 million in coming years.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has recently made it clear that the Pentagon needs to shift its focus to weapons systems and communications capabilities that are more flexible and adaptable.
Now, the question before the secretary and his staff hinges on supply and demand. If they anticipate dramatic commercial satellite bandwidth oversupply and assume that their needs will continue to be identical to those of the commercial marketplace, the answer might be to stick with the current contract model. But if they see a tightening trend on commercial bandwidth supply, and a growth in DoD-unique requirements for capacity and/or security, then they need a contract vehicle that provides a direct dialogue with the satellite owner/operators. Based on current and projected supply numbers for commercial satellite bandwidth, this would appear to be an easy decision.
The government has been and will continue to be a major user of commercial satellite bandwidth. DoD needs to develop a forwardlooking contract vehicle that takes advantage of the fact that it is a “preferred” commercial customer. Such a vehicle would remove unnecessary layers of bureaucracy, reduce the cost of commercial satellite services, and provide special access to advanced services such as hosted payload opportunities. The first step toward enjoying those benefits will be achieved by dealing directly with satellite operators on the next contract. ♦
Kay Sears is president of Intelsat General Corp.
Segovia
Beyond Bandwith: SATCOM's Next Generation is in Your Power
by Peter Jones
Albert Einstein is reported to have said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Applying this thought to the next generation of commercial satellite communications can be instructive: Are we insightful or mistaken?
First, let’s give credit where credit is due. Two near-simultaneous events—the breaking of the COMSAT Corp./Intelsat “monopoly” of U.S. satellite communications in the late 1990s/early 2000s, and the rise of the indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract vehicle as a recognized and respected acquisition methodology—led to DISA’s evolution of the DSTS-G contract.
DSTS-G brought real competition to the DISA COMSATCOM market and took a major leap of faith: allowing small companies to manage the complexity, responsibility and financial challenge of providing global space segment for the warfighter. The DSTS-G contractors met the challenges, cutting costs, improving services and reducing space segment acquisition times to a point undreamed of during the days of the COMSAT/Intelsat monopoly.
The DSTS-G contract was a watershed event, not only for COMSATCOM acquisitions, but also for government acquisitions in general. Small businesses showed that their agility, speed and flexibility, coupled with a government willingness to partner with relatively small players instead of relying on the traditional large corporations, could pay significant dividends. We’ve seen DISA’s success in DSTS-G replicated time and time again in other major government procurements, such as Networx, Alliant, NETCENTS, ITES-2 and Millenia Lite.
CELL PHONE MODEL
To understand the next generation of COMSATCOM, think back to 1982. One of the seminal events that year was the agreement by AT&T to divest itself of its regional operating entities into independent companies. This deregulation led to the evolution of the new telephone companies, like Verizon, Sprint and Cingular, and a new business model. Many of us remember the time when the phone inside your house was not your property—it belonged to the phone company, and you paid a monthly fee for both the phone and the wiring in your walls. Service was expensive, and you got it on the phone company’s terms, not yours.
A decade later, things had changed immeasurably. You owned the phone, the wiring and everything down to the box on the side of your house. If your daughter wanted a pink phone, you just got one. As cordless phones proliferated, the need for wall jacks and lots of installed wiring went away. Answering machines? No problem. Dial phones? Antiques. And, most importantly, the ubiquitous cell phone became a reality, finally freeing the user from the tyranny of the wire.
The cell phone brought with it a fundamental change in the way we live. Now we have communications that travel with us; are always on; register themselves into a pre-existing network; provide “one number” access to an individual, no matter where he or she is in the world; and offer the economies of scale that are possible when users share a network—even globally.
Now, as we near the second decade of the 21st century, the cell phone has become the model, not only for our culture, but also for how DISA must change COMSATCOM.
The price for bandwidth has been reduced by DSTS-G to a point where further significant reductions are unlikely. The space segment cost reductions that we’ve seen over the last 10 years will remain, but additional significant cuts in cost simply won’t happen, due to supply and demand. There is a finite amount of satellite space segment, and the costs of launching a new satellite are significant. Intelsat, SES, Eutelsat and others simply aren’t going to dilute their margins by launching an overcapacity of bandwidth. The dollars-per-megahertz number will not change materially.
The next generation of COMSATCOM price efficiencies will come not from forcing ever-slimmer margins on the space segment broker, but instead from technological innovation and operational changes. As DoD moves to lighter, faster, expeditionary missions, the DoD COMSATCOM service will morph to a ubiquitous, “always on” model, which ensures the user gets the end-to-end bandwidth needed, where it’s needed, when it’s needed. Finally, it will be the Holy Grail of telecommunications—connectivity that is abundant, assured, secure and global, at an affordable price.
KEYS TO THE NETWORK
The keys to the next-generation COMSATCOM network will be threefold. It will be IP-based, global and truly be a part of the Global Information Grid.
First, Internet Protocol. If we are to achieve additional cost savings, IP networks are the only real choice for leveraging shared bandwidth access technology such as Time Division Multiple Access. IP networks allow a large number of users to share the same bandwidth and still provide communications that meet the users’ operational needs. The use of IP modems on COMSATCOM (including current force modems and the Joint IP Modem for DoD) will provide the means for breaking the inefficiency of legacy circuit-based provisioning. Instead, multiple users will cooperatively access the same bandwidth—further reducing user costs while maintaining service levels that equal or exceed the legacy model.
Compare this to the evolution of your cell phone. Circuit-based connectivity is equivalent to one copper wire in the wall, which you pay for whether you use it or not. Always-on IP SATCOM is like your cell phone. You decide how much service you want: Just voice? Web surfing and e-mail on your phone? How about maps? Or directions? Or satellite imagery? Then you use it as you see fit. And when you’re not using the network, chances are that someone else will, and this reduces your out-of-pocket costs.
DISA’s next-generation COMSATCOM acquisition must make networked IP services a core requirement to ensure the most costeffective prices prevail.
Second, global. DoD has unique requirements, but also global requirements. A combat unit can be in Iraq, Afghanistan or California literally within days. The special operator may need to move over continents in hours. The warfighter shouldn’t have to get different equipment, access codes and lineup instructions to move from the Europe to the Pacific, or from the training range to garrison. Again, compare it to your cell phone. The plane from Washington lands in Los Angeles, and we turn on our phones. Literally within seconds, the phone finds the local network, registers into it, finds our voice mail, downloads our e-mail, and puts us back in business before the plane has parked at the gate.
There is no reason that COMSATCOM can’t be just like that: a ubiquitous, always-on, pre-positioned network, which the warfighter’s SATCOM terminal locates by GPS, automatically finds the proper satellite, registers securely into the DoD network, and begins moving knowledge. And it can happen, anywhere and anytime, securely and nearly automatically. In 2005, the GIG Bandwidth Expansion program proved that a high-capacity, prearranged global network could meet and exceed the vast majority of DoD’s requirements without having to build unique, costly, duplicative data services for multiple users. DISA’s next-generation COMSATCOM acquisition must focus not on unique networks that duplicate services for different users, but on a common, global network that provides access to net-centric services with standards-based terminal equipment and telecommunications protocols.
Third, COMSATCOM must truly become part of the Global Information Grid. To many people, COMSATCOM is “a way of getting to the GIG”—a separate and distinct transport tool that “is not part of the GIG.” The COMSATCOM community has fostered that separation, and not integrated itself well into the larger GIG. Separate management tools, requirements databases and status reporting mean that real end-to-end system management is not possible, and the concept of a seamless, integrated global network is stymied.
We need a mental shift, not only from industry but also from DoD’s users and managers: copper, fiber, COMSATCOM, MILSATCOM, wireless, and technologies not yet invented. All are part and parcel of the GIG, managed as an integrated whole, operated seamlessly. DISA’s next-generation COMSATCOM acquisition must provide true, global, end-to-end system management, and be managed as an integral part of the GIG.
BACK TO THE FUTURE?
There are myriad forces that will try to forestall the natural evolution of COMSATCOM. Satellite system operators want to protect the lucrative, inefficient single-channel-per-carrier transmission model, which maximizes bandwidth usage and revenue while limiting the number of simultaneous users. The legacy bandwidth brokers and resellers view bandwidth, not services, as the core business model. Acquisition “experts” decry the risks of buying multi-year SATCOM contracts, or of buying service at all, as opposed to simply buying bandwidth. And COMSATCOM enthusiasts believe that COMSATCOM is special, and cannot be managed as efficiently as an integral part of the DISN.
Instead, compare today with 1982. In less than 30 years we have completely changed the global telecommunications infrastructure from a group of inefficient, centrally planned telecommunications companies to a vibrant, interconnected, “always on,” self-registering, self-adapting, loosely coupled set of networks, based on common standards, protocols, security services and rules. DISA’s next-generation COMSATCOM program needs to match this level of sophistication, by implementing a global, “always on,” ubiquitous network to support any warfighter, any time, any place.
Let the warfighter determine how much and what kind of services he or she wants, and let advanced technologies and economies of scale drive costs down to levels that are beyond the reach of DSTS-G. Make COMSATCOM as ubiquitous and easy to use as the cell phone. We can do it; the technologies exist today. All we need is the kind of vision and leadership that DISA showed in 2001. ♦
Peter Jones is senior director for business development at Segovia.
