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TRW ready for tech battle in 'cyber' space
by George Wiley
With the announcement last week of a new multi-million dollar contract with partner Astrolink International, Redondo Beach-based TRW Space and Electronics Group continues a massive effort to position itself as a major player in the world broadband telecommunications market.
When satellites are launched and put into operation in 2003, TRW and its partners will be taking the battle over cyberspace territory more than ever into outer space itself. To TRW that may mean as many as 1,000 new jobs.
The most recent contract awarded to TRW, described only as being worth millions of dollars, calls on the electronics company to build hardware and software interface technology to let ground-based users of Astrolink's proposed satellite system communicate with and through the orbiting communications devices that TRW is already under contract to build.
Part of TRW's latest contract is for a payload emulator system to let ground-based Astrolink users verify ground-to-payload interfaces before conducting tests with the actual orbiting satellites.
Astrolink is a joint venture between TRW, Lockheed Martin Corp., and an Italian communications company, Telespazio SpA. According to TRW spokesman Jack Pritchett, under a previous $900 million equity agreement, the three companies have joined to build the proposed $3.6 billion satellite system that Astrolink hopes to have in operation by 2003.
Astrolink hopes to become the first broadband satellite provider over an area covering the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Hughes Corp. and a European company, Spaceway, are also in the race for future satellite broadband customers. Hughes hopes to beat Astrolink into space with a broadband satellite serving North America only. Other competitors including a Microsoft-allied company are also popping up. But Astrolink is hoping to be one of the first into space.
According to Pritchett, TRW will develop the satellites (initially four of them), the software and ground hardware to create the broadband capacity, essentially targeted for fast-growing numbers of Internet users. The spacecraft to launch the satellites will be built by Lockheed, and Telespazio will develop the network control centers at four international locations to make the complicated system operational.
"These satellites are being built right here in Redondo Beach," said Pritchett. "We're proud that TRW is a leader in this effort. This is an important program."
To say the least.
According to Pritchett, the term "broadband" simply means the ability to transmit huge amounts of digital communications data, into the billions of bits per second. To date, the broadband battle has largely been waged among installers of fiber optic cable on the ground. But the deployment of broadband capacity satellites will challenge fiber optic companies by providing Internet access to developing countries where no cable networks exist.
Last July, when TRW first announced its Astrolink commitment, TRW Redondo executive Timothy Hanneman estimated the broadband satellite market at "$300 million annually in sales for TRW over the next several years with continued growth thereafter."
According to Pritchett, the demand for Astrolink satellite capacity is projected to grow 15 percent annually. "In 1998 there were fewer than 100 million Internet users," he said. "The projection is that by 2003 there will be more than 330 million users."
Pritchett said that even in the U.S. fewer than 5 percent of all buildings now have fiber optic cable capacity. While it is possible to access the Internet without broadband, that won't be feasible much longer, said Pritchett. Normal phone lines can handle limited amounts of data, but they won't be able to handle the data required to transmit moving pictures over the Internet, said Pritchett.
In the long run, you'll need broadband to use the Internet effectively.
The broadband satellites will do more than carry signals to areas where no cable exists. With satellites and on-site signal receptors, whether at home or at work, the whole infrastructure for cable laying and the whole process of cities approving cable and cable-operator franchises will be "cut out of the roof," Pritchett said.
Pritchett said TRW's satellites, developed from craft initially designed and built for military purposes, will contain "very sophisticated digital switching systems called 'packet switches'" that will allow satellite data subscribers to transmit huge volumes of data between one ground station and another. Users will include big companies communicating between regional headquarters around the world, for example, Pritchett said.
Initially, Astrolink will launch four satellites, the minimum necessary for worldwide coverage without locations like the North and South poles where few people live. Pritchett said the satellites will be space-hardened to make them less susceptible to radiation and will have many built-in redundancies, like cross links among
satellites, to make them super reliable.
"The global demands for bandwidth are just astounding," said Pritchett, noting that Astrolink could increase its capacity with subsequent satellite launches in groups of four.
"The U.S. is the undisputed leader in this technology," said Pritchett, "and TRW is unrivaled on digital switching and bandwidth on demand. TRW is the only one."
TRW's 1998 sales on its many products totaled about $12 billion, the company had previously announced.ER