A radio satellite network

Macquarie Broadcasting is a national commercial network consisting of five capital sites, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra and two regional sites of Wollongong and Townsville. In addition to this there are some 35 affiliated stations taking Macquarie programs. Planning and implementation of the project was begun in January 1984 and the last up-link site was completed in December 1986. Initially the network was developed to replace the existing terrestrial system with a more cost effective method of delivery and at the same time provide a higher quality service. However, the situation did not remain this way as it became apparent during the development that the Australian radio industry was in desperate need of an efficient cost effective distribution network. At this point Macquarie began to develop in parallel with its own internal requirements a program distribution system for affiliated radio stations. Due to Aussat´s transponder costing, 8 kHz channels were found to be the optimum cost per bandwidth