Satellite Plus

Kacific selects SpaceX to provide launch service

Kacific-1 will bring fast, cost-effective internet service to South East Asia and the Pacific

Port Vila, Vanuatu– 5 September 2017 – Kacific Broadband Satellites Group (Kacific) has selected SpaceX as the launch provider for its Kacific-1 satellite, which is being built by The Boeing Company.

Kacific-1 will be launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9, a two-stage orbit-class rocket designed from the ground-up for maximum reliability and reusability.

“SpaceX has a breadth of vision that appeals to us,” says Christian Patouraux, Kacific CEO. “The company is committed to changing the way people think about space and the possibilities it represents. Signing with SpaceX as our launch service provider is a major step towards delivering our own vision. We look forward to seeing Kacific-1 atop a Falcon 9 Rocket in 2019.”

“SpaceX is proud to partner with Kacific on the milestone launch of the company’s first satellite, Kacific-1.” said Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX. “We appreciate their confidence in our proven capabilities and look forward to delivering their satellite to orbit.”

In February 2017 Kacific placed an order with The Boeing Company for the Kacific-1 satellite. Based on the reliable 702 satellite platform, Kacific-1 is designed to deliver high speed broadband via 56 narrow Ka-band beams, with the most powerful signal level ever achieved in a commercial satellite in the South East Asia and Pacific regions.

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Kacific selects SpaceX to provide launch service | Kacific Kacific Broadband Satellites Group (Kacific) has selected SpaceX as the launch provider for its Kacific-1 satellite, which is being built by The Boeing Company.

Warming up the dish since winter is here.

Satellite start-up promises ultra-fast internet to remote Asia-Pacific and NZ locations.

The Pacific Islands, remote parts of rural New Zealand and poor but populous parts of eastern Indonesia and Papua New Guinea are target markets for a new satellite-based project that its backers say will bring low-cost, ultra-fast broadband to areas that are too expensive to reach by cable.

The brainchild of Christian Patouraux, a Belgian-born, Sydney-based entrepreneur with a 22-year career in satellite projects, the Kacific Broadband Satellites initiative owes part of its success to the equity funding efforts of boutique Wellington investment and advisory firm, Caniwi Capital, which has helped raise more than US$20 million in equity for the US$147 million project.

Unusual in the satellite industry for being a start-up operation, Kacific is partnering with Asia's largest satellite player, Tokyo-based JSAT Corp. The pair have placed an order with Boeing Satellite Systems for shared use of a 'condominium' satellite using so-called high throughput technology, which delivers focused satellite beams to produce targeted, higher bandwidth broadband than older generations of satellite technology.

Kacific will offer services in the southern hemisphere, while JSAT will take northern hemisphere capacity.

"Kacific-1 is designed to deliver uncontended broadband throughput via 57 Ka-band narrow beams, each having a capacity up to 1.25Gbps, with the highest signal power ever achieved in the region," according to a statement from Caniwi. "The beams are selectively tailored to cover precise pockets of demand in a geographically dispersed footprint of 20 Pacific and South East Asian nations."

As a result, Kacific says it has sold capacity in 51 out of 57 beams so far, through take-or-pay contracts, with most beams exceeding 70 percent firm capacity bookings and several being almost saturated, for total future committed revenues of more than US$430 million. The project is funded by a mix of debt, equity and pre-payments.

The Kacific service could also produce a competitively priced alternative to terrestrial infrastructure of the sort that Crown Fibre Holdings is seeking in the $150 million second tranche of funding for the Rural Broadband Initiative, Caniwi believes.

While RBI2 bids are due within weeks, its specifications don't include satellite options and Kacific's forecasts include no RBI2 revenues, although Patouraux is confident there will be demand from New Zealand internet service providers seeking to feed high-speed broadband to the agricultural sector, where remote data collection and analysis is starting to revolutionise precision farming methods.

In an interview with BusinessDesk, Patouraux said he'd identified remote markets incapable of being efficiently served by terrestrial services as an untapped market and had identified the Pacific as ideal, being "extremely disparate, with difficult terrain, and lowly populated" but with good levels of education and literacy. Tourism operators were also seeking more cost-effective broadband for both their own operations and to offer guests less expensive wi-fi at resorts.

Further market research had identified large populations in parts of eastern Indonesia, particularly, where local entrepreneurs were likely to be able to establish local wireless-based ISPs if they had access to UFB via satellite. Service will also be offered to PNG, the Philippines, the Malaysian peninsula and parts of French Polynesia.

"The aim is to have power sufficient to deliver a high level of bandwidth with a very small terminal," said Patouraux, who likens the satellite beams to the equivalent of a cellphone tower, creating relatively low capital costs for a local user.

While Kacific will target rural New Zealand, remote parts of Australia are off the agenda, with the National Broadband Network initiative having a "totally different focus", Patouraux said. The few Pacific Island states where telephony is run by monopolies are also unattractive.

French INSEAD business school alumnus connections led him to Caniwi managing director James Gould, with the Wellington firm brokering a US$20 million contribution from a UK 'family office' specialising in infrastructure investments, along with equity contributions from Caniwi principals in their own right and high net worth investors in the UK, Canada and Australia.

https://www.nbr.co.nz/article/satellite-start-promises-ultra-fast-internet-remote-asia-pacific-nz-locations-b-200603

Satellite start-up promises ultra-fast internet to remote Asia-Pacific, NZ locations Kacific will offer services in the southern hemisphere, while JSAT will take northern hemisphere capacity.

Beam has some exciting news for Aotearoa!

A Singapore-based satellite operator has put in an order for a new satellite which aims to bring high speed broadband to unserviced and remote areas in the Pacific and South East Asia.

Already governments and telecommunications providers in three South East Asian countries and 11 Pacific Island countries have signed up for Kacific's services which are scheduled to come on line in 2019.

Kacific chief executive Christian Patoraux spoke with Koroi Hawkins who began by asking about the viability of running a satellite with such a huge footprint in the Pacific.

TRANSCRIPT

CHRISTIAN PATORAUX: The reason why footprint was an issue was because it was not necessarily economical to put an entire satellite over the Pacific. So you would have to put a satellite that would look at the Pacific region. Put capacity, most of its capacity on the Pacific region and as you know the Pacific region is not the most populous place. So it may be difficult to find a market for an entire satellite there. What we did is that we have a satellite that will straddle South East Asia and the Pacific in order to bring, to build a critical mass to justify the purchase of an entire satellite. So if you want the Pacific in this case benefits from the fact that we found enough market in South East Asia to also serve the Pacific. Not only that but, our satellite is only about half a satellite. The other half is used by the Japanese corporation Sky Perfect JSAT. So in that sense we did not have to put all the money to buy an entire satellite but about half of that.

KOROI HAWKINS: And the figures are quite steep. Maybe if you can run us through how much it is going to cost and how long? ( It is going to take to get up and running?)

CP: To build the satellite and to launch it, to insure it, to put in all the ground systems and so on and only for our about half of the satellite it is costing $US147 million that we have raised over the last three and a half years that our project has been in the making. In order to raise this money we had to show the finance industry that we have revenue that were already secured and to do this we find that all the contracts that were mentioned already with 15 different customers and that amounts to total revenue of $US434 million of secured revenue. Now in terms of timeline a satellite will have to live in space for at least 15 years. In our case the Boeing satellite is actually planning to live longer than that. But to live that long alone in space you have to take all the steps necessary during the construction. So it will take two and a half years to build it to test it, to make sure that the satellite is robust and has all the units and redundancy on board to deliver the remarkable service that it will deliver in the Pacific.

Mr Patoraux estimates the service would cost the average person in the Pacific five to ten US dollars per month for 3-4 GB of data at speeds of more than 100 megabits per second.

Mr Patoraux says telecommunications providers could be deliver the service via wifi with internet vouchers or through the local 3G or 4G mobile networks.

Given the early sales success in Asia-Pacific, Kacific is now expanding its model to other regions with plans for follow-on satellites.

http://www.radionz.co.nz/international/programmes/datelinepacific/audio/201834573/kacific-puts-in-order-for-new-asia-pacific-satellite

Kacific puts in order for new Asia-Pacific satellite A Singapore-based satellite operator has put in an order for a new satellite which aims to bring high speed broadband to unserviced and remote areas in the Pacific and South East Asia.

Beam is excited to hear Boeing saying, KACIFIC-1 is scheduled to launch in 2019! All systems go!!!

http://www.reuters.com/article/brief-boeing-says-jcsat-18-kacific-1-is-idUSFWN1G50GA

BRIEF-Boeing says JCSAT-18/KACIFIC-1 is scheduled to launch in 2019. Boeing

Kacific “attracting global attention” says Nikkei Asian Review.

The global space industry was worth $335.3 billion in 2015, an increase of 21% over five years.

Two other companies looking to make use of communication satellites have also attracted global attention. Singapore-based startup Kacific plans to launch satellites to provide high-speed internet to the remote communities of the Pacific islands, Indonesia, the Philippines, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, while Bank Rakyat Indonesia operates a satellite to handle its 50 million accounts, a first among financial institutions.

Full story here...
http://asia.nikkei.com/magazine/20170126/On-the-Cover/The-final-frontier-is-now-the-next-place-of-business?page=2

The 'final frontier' is now the next place of business- Nikkei Asian Review TOKYO It was a sunny January morning at the Uchinoura Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture, the perfect day for a launch."3... 2... 1... 0."The countd