How much does bitrate cost?
 

What is the ballpark cost of (say) 8 megabit/s transponder space, on
a satellite able to broadcast to UK minidishes.
I'm wondering how much of an economic driver there is to keep picture
quality down.

Ian Stirling wrote:
What is the ballpark cost of (say) 8 megabit/s transponder space, on
a satellite able to broadcast to UK minidishes.
I'm wondering how much of an economic driver there is to keep picture
quality down.


Someone forwarded prices for radio stations on DSat once and it was £46k
per annum for 192 kbps plus the cost of getting the bitstream to the
satellite uplink station which probably won't be cheap either.

8 Mbps / 192 kbps = 41.7

So, if bit rate costs are linear then it would cost

41.7 x £46k = £1.9 million per annum

and that's just for carriage on the satellite. However, I don't think
costs will be linear with bit rate, so 8 Mbps is bound to be a lot less
than that, but still a large sum of money. Another thing to bear in mind
is that broadcasters can lease whole 33 Mbps transponders, so for the
fixed costs of the transponder the lower the bit rate the more channels
/ services they can fit in.

And satellite is almost certainly the cheapest platform to transmit on!!


--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info

DAB sounds worse than FM, Freeview, digital satellite, cable and
broadband internet radio

Steve wrote:
Ian Stirling wrote:

What is the ballpark cost of (say) 8 megabit/s transponder space, on
a satellite able to broadcast to UK minidishes.
I'm wondering how much of an economic driver there is to keep picture
quality down.



Someone forwarded prices for radio stations on DSat once and it was £46k
per annum for 192 kbps plus the cost of getting the bitstream to the
satellite uplink station which probably won't be cheap either.

8 Mbps / 192 kbps = 41.7

So, if bit rate costs are linear then it would cost

41.7 x £46k = £1.9 million per annum

is that price mostly costs or is there a huge markup??

"Chris p" wrote in message
...
Steve wrote:
Ian Stirling wrote:

What is the ballpark cost of (say) 8 megabit/s transponder space, on
a satellite able to broadcast to UK minidishes.
I'm wondering how much of an economic driver there is to keep picture
quality down.



Someone forwarded prices for radio stations on DSat once and it was £46k
per annum for 192 kbps plus the cost of getting the bitstream to the
satellite uplink station which probably won't be cheap either.

8 Mbps / 192 kbps = 41.7

So, if bit rate costs are linear then it would cost

41.7 x £46k = £1.9 million per annum

is that price mostly costs or is there a huge markup??

That includes a huge markup extrapolated from a single radio channel, paid to a
middleman who rents capacity then resells.

Put it like this, the Beeb apparently saved £17m a year for ditching Sky's
conditional access (based on five years), apparently £8m per annum has gone/will
go to pay for additional capacity, 6 transponders in total, and all the backhaul
links from the various different BBC backwaters.

You need to add that to their previous leases from Astra, £40m over five years?
hrm.

Az.

"Chris p" wrote in message
...
Steve wrote:
Ian Stirling wrote:

What is the ballpark cost of (say) 8 megabit/s transponder space, on
a satellite able to broadcast to UK minidishes.
I'm wondering how much of an economic driver there is to keep picture
quality down.



Someone forwarded prices for radio stations on DSat once and it was £46k
per annum for 192 kbps plus the cost of getting the bitstream to the
satellite uplink station which probably won't be cheap either.

8 Mbps / 192 kbps = 41.7

So, if bit rate costs are linear then it would cost

41.7 x £46k = £1.9 million per annum

is that price mostly costs or is there a huge markup??


You can't fix a sat out as far as geostationary orbit. So each Sat has
finite life and will need replacing. The cost of putting it up has to be
recovered over that finite life. Even if components don't fail due to
improved relaliabilty I would expect that the Sats consume small amounts
rocket fuel correcting alignment/attitude shifts. When that fuel is gone the
Sat is junk. In the past the photoelectic cells would degrade reducing the
number of channels supported over time.

On Sat, 19 Jun 2004 16:25:25 +0100, "John Russell"
wrote:


"Chris p" wrote in message
...
Steve wrote:
Ian Stirling wrote:

What is the ballpark cost of (say) 8 megabit/s transponder space, on
a satellite able to broadcast to UK minidishes.
I'm wondering how much of an economic driver there is to keep picture
quality down.



Someone forwarded prices for radio stations on DSat once and it was £46k
per annum for 192 kbps plus the cost of getting the bitstream to the
satellite uplink station which probably won't be cheap either.

8 Mbps / 192 kbps = 41.7

So, if bit rate costs are linear then it would cost

41.7 x £46k = £1.9 million per annum

is that price mostly costs or is there a huge markup??


You can't fix a sat out as far as geostationary orbit. So each Sat has
finite life and will need replacing. The cost of putting it up has to be
recovered over that finite life. Even if components don't fail due to
improved relaliabilty I would expect that the Sats consume small amounts
rocket fuel correcting alignment/attitude shifts. When that fuel is gone the
Sat is junk. In the past the photoelectic cells would degrade reducing the
number of channels supported over time.

I'd add the actual cost of getting into orbit is not small.

When I was working in the business in the early 90's as a graduate the
"ball park" figure for launching an earth observation satellite (very
similar to a telecoms orbit) was $200 / gram of payload (I think.. it
was along time ago)

ie to launch 50kg cost $10 million.

You may think thats a lot.. but worldwide commercial launch market in
1997 was almost $3 billion (1).

Regards

1) http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/legaff/9-23gold.html

"Mark Blewett" wrote in message

I'd add the actual cost of getting into orbit is not small.

When I was working in the business in the early 90's as a graduate the
"ball park" figure for launching an earth observation satellite (very
similar to a telecoms orbit) was $200 / gram of payload (I think.. it
was along time ago)

ie to launch 50kg cost $10 million.

You may think thats a lot.. but worldwide commercial launch market in
1997 was almost $3 billion (1).

Regards

1) http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/legaff/9-23gold.html

Most of the risks or which are underwritten by government at some stage, i.e.
the use of surplus missiles, R&D and vanity projects (Araine, Galileo), longterm
government launch contracts bolstering the bottom line, the use of favourable
territory near the equator (e.g. French Guyana).

It's amazing it's labelled a market.

Az.

Mark Blewett wrote:
On Sat, 19 Jun 2004 16:25:25 +0100, "John Russell"
wrote:


"Chris p" wrote in message
...
Steve wrote:
Ian Stirling wrote:

What is the ballpark cost of (say) 8 megabit/s transponder space, on
a satellite able to broadcast to UK minidishes.
I'm wondering how much of an economic driver there is to keep picture
quality down.



Someone forwarded prices for radio stations on DSat once and it was ?46k
per annum for 192 kbps plus the cost of getting the bitstream to the
satellite uplink station which probably won't be cheap either.

8 Mbps / 192 kbps = 41.7

So, if bit rate costs are linear then it would cost

41.7 x ?46k = ?1.9 million per annum

is that price mostly costs or is there a huge markup??


You can't fix a sat out as far as geostationary orbit. So each Sat has
finite life and will need replacing. The cost of putting it up has to be
recovered over that finite life. Even if components don't fail due to
improved relaliabilty I would expect that the Sats consume small amounts
rocket fuel correcting alignment/attitude shifts. When that fuel is gone the
Sat is junk. In the past the photoelectic cells would degrade reducing the
number of channels supported over time.

I'd add the actual cost of getting into orbit is not small.

When I was working in the business in the early 90's as a graduate the
"ball park" figure for launching an earth observation satellite (very
similar to a telecoms orbit) was $200 / gram of payload (I think.. it
was along time ago)

ie to launch 50kg cost $10 million.

The oft-quoted number is some $10000/lb or so.
This is broadly right, for many launchers, though it can vary by about
an order of magnitude depending on the launcher, and the specs.

Depressingly, it has been broadly right for some decades now.

The shuttle unfortunately has not fullfilled its promise of lowering launch
costs, and a recent NASA initiative aimed at lowering launch costs to
$1000/lb has concluded that it's impossible.

It probably is for NASA, for example the recent X-33 project, which was
a demonstrator that was to be expanded into an orbital vehicle which would
reduce launch costs, had not one new technology in it, but four or five
in the same vehicle, two or three of which were bleeding edge, and one that
had never actually been developed in hardware.
Unsurprisingly, it never actually got finished, despite having billions
spent on it.

The whole philosophy is insane, trying to shave the last milligram off
by spending thousands of dollars, when fuel costs only a couple of hundred
dollars per ton.

Perhaps appropriate when you've got vehicles that are flying hundreds of
times a year, but not four or five.

(building a 1Kg payload four stage liquid fueled rocket in the garage)

However, this is irrelevant to the price of bandwidth, which does not
have to closely reflect at any given time the cost of providing the
satellites.

The shuttle unfortunately has not fullfilled its promise of lowering
launch
costs, and a recent NASA initiative aimed at lowering launch costs to
$1000/lb has concluded that it's impossible.

It seems to me the cost's they where trying to reduce was not fuel but the
cost of throwing away the expensive "built by the US "rockets.
Instead they ended up with the expensive "maintained by the US" shuttle.

They could have simply reduced the build costs by having the rockets built
by the chinese.Oh, that's where we are now!

John Russell wrote:
The shuttle unfortunately has not fullfilled its promise of lowering
launch
costs, and a recent NASA initiative aimed at lowering launch costs to
$1000/lb has concluded that it's impossible.

It seems to me the cost's they where trying to reduce was not fuel but the
cost of throwing away the expensive "built by the US "rockets.
Instead they ended up with the expensive "maintained by the US" shuttle.

Partially true.
A lot of the philosophy of rocket design stems from where weight and
size had to be minimised at all costs, for use in ICBM silos.

The cost of fuel is utterly negligable at the moment.

Rockets don't inherently have to be expensive.

For example, if you double the mass of a stage, but it's lots cheaper
to make, that may well be a win.

They could have simply reduced the build costs by having the rockets built
by the chinese.Oh, that's where we are now!

There are US export controls which make this very, very difficult to do.