Optimizing terrestrial transport architecture in satellite telephony networks

The demand for telecommunications service has encouraged proliferation of alternative service providers to provide increased capacity. As capacity comes into balance with demand, and multiple competing providers become available, the demand for services becomes price-sensitive. Under competitive conditions, minimizing system capital and operating cost becomes critical to the business success of any provider. To support this analysis, the Satellite Systems Engineering team at Nortel Networks is developing a tool for analyzing gateway placement and leased line costs in satellite telephony networks. This tool will estimate the optimum placement of gateways, access equipment, and spot beams with respect to leased line costs in the network service area. The tool can be extended to size gateway radio capacity, access equipment, and trunking, and can also be extended to match spot beam coverage to traffic density. A case study is presented as verification of this tool