Next generation satellite system for rural development

Satellites have long been proven to be a solution to communications needs as they provide an instant deployment of service over a large geographical area and offer every user an equivalent service of quality. This paper describes a complete satellite-based turnkey communications system for a large region such as China, providing basic as well as advanced services to rural areas. The system combines the expertise of Marconi Space, who have played a key role in supply of all generations of INMARSAT´s mobile communications satellites (and many other communications satellites) with that of Westinghouse, who have provided the ground segment, network control and system integration for the North American MSAT system and similar mobile systems worldwide. The overall system architecture is described, stressing an original turnkey approach and the key features of space and ground segments, implementation strategy and experience of past realisations are presented. The system provides personal communications and rural telephony services to a variety of user terminal types. The mobile terminals are dual-mode to allow access to local terrestrial cellular networks when within range