[Via Satellite 08-13-2015] The U.K.-based Goonhilly Earth Station is shifting back to prominence in the satellite industry after rebounding from an uncertain fate. The iconic facility, which beamed the very first transatlantic television signals from the original Telstar satellite, was on the verge of demolition a few years ago after its previous owner, BT<\/b>, had moved substantially out of the satellite business. Upon learning of this destiny, Ian Jones, now CEO of the company Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd.,<\/b> (GES) intervened, striking a deal with the telecom giant to rescue the facility and set about restoring its former glory.<\/p>\n
Jones inked an agreement to lease the antennas at Goonhilly for three years, providing time to find customers and investors. GES formed as a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to acquire the site from BT.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a two-stage process,\u201d Jones told Via Satellite<\/i>. \u201cInitially we leased just the antennas on a fixed term of three years. Within those three years we had an exclusive option to buy the site at a pre-agreed price. From January 2011 we went out and got customers. We built the business, found our investors, and that enabled us to exercise the \u2018purchase option.\u2019 In January 2014 we paid BT and the site became ours.\u201d<\/p>\n
GES revitalized the Earth station and now owns the entire 164-acre estate. Jones said the site, which NASA<\/b>, France Telecom<\/b>, and BT\u2019s predecessor, the then-general post office in the U.K., built in 1962, still has \u201cfantastic infrastructure.\u201d Fiber cables connect Goonhilly to subsea headends and tap into the BT network. BT and GES maintain a cordial relationship today, with BT leasing office space from GES at Goonhilly. BT also operates the SEA-ME-WE-3 subsea cable, one of the main Internet connections between Europe and Asia.<\/p>\n
Goonhilly has antennas that open business opportunities in Asia, Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, Jones said. Still, the company is upgrading and updating infrastructure across the site to accommodate new and returning business.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs well as doing the gardening, painting the rooms, and those sorts of things, we have been investing in existing antennas and building new ones,\u201d Jones said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been turning the amplifiers on, in some cases freeing up motors and replacing some mechanical systems, but also we have now installed a cross site RF-over-fiber system. We already had fiber delivering IP all the way around the site, but now that\u2019s enabling us to concentrate all of our baseband equipment in the central part of the site where we can have secure rooms for different customers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones said the RF-over-fiber system separates the baseband equipment of different customers while also enabling GES to switch the service between different antennas for maintenance purposes or if requirements change. This is helpful, because several satellite operators have sought out services from the site. Jones said GES provides telemetry and control services for SES<\/b>, monitoring services for Inmarsat<\/b>\u2019s Global Xpress High Throughput Satellite (HTS) network, and helps Planet Labs <\/b>beam down data from its constellation of \u201cDove\u201d CubeSats. Earlier this month the company announced an agreement with Hispasat <\/b>for Second Generation Digital Video Broadcasting \u2013 Satellite (DVB-S2) TV uplink services that will saturate a full transponder on Hispasat 1E. This influx of customers is driving a surge in the need for new equipment.<\/p>\n
\u201cRecently the BBC<\/b> moved out of their traditional Shepard\u2019s Bush home in London and left behind about 16 antennas. We acquired those and we\u2019ve moved them down to Goonhilly now. We are in the process of reinstalling those \u2026 we almost can\u2019t build them quick enough with the level of interest that\u2019s coming in,\u201d said Jones.<\/p>\n
GES is also working with Avanti Communications<\/b>, hosting an antenna for the U.K.\u2019s Satellite Applications Catapult<\/b>, and is bringing an existing iDirect <\/b>service to Goonhilly in October. Along with satellite companies, Jones said GES works with a number of universities, such as Oxford<\/b>, Manchester<\/b>, Leeds<\/b>, Herts<\/b>, Durham<\/b>, and Southampton<\/b>, which are developing radio astronomy instruments that will soon find a home at Goonhilly.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also just started now working with the European Space Agency<\/b> (ESA), QinetiQ<\/b>, and BAE Systems <\/b>to look at the possibility of upgrading our largest antenna, Goonhilly Six (GHY 6), to potentially support the NASA Orion mission around the moon,\u201d Jones added.<\/p>\n
GES has private equity investment in place today as well as a U.K. government Regional Growth Fund grant to help develop the Earth station. Jones said the turnaround regarding Goonhilly\u2019s profitability is in part because, as a small company, GES is able to pursue opportunities that would likely have been of too low an order of magnitude for a large company like BT to be interested in initially.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not scared off by tiny contracts. If that\u2019s what it takes, we will get our foot in the door, win a small contract, do a really good job on it, and we build from there. That\u2019s the way that small companies work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The majority of GES\u2019 antennas are devoted to commercial activities, with one antenna devoted fully to radio astronomy and another spit between radio astronomy and commercial use. Soon the company will be linking GHY 1 to Jodrell Bank Observatory <\/b>to join the enhanced Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (e-MERLIN) radio telescope.<\/p>\n
Jones said future projects include some human capital development and healthcare projects in Africa, potentially supporting domestic space missions in the U.K., and forming new partnerships with other satellite operators. With Goonhilly\u2019s destruction averted, GES can focus on bringing new business, which fits nicely with the U.K.\u2019s goal of growing its place in the global space industry to 10 percent by 2030. Last but certainly not least, GES hopes to get its visitor center online so enthusiasts can see the historic facility.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are desperate to get our visitor center open,\u201d said Jones. \u201cThe public tell us all the time they want to come and visit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Via Satellite 08-13-2015] The U.K.-based Goonhilly Earth Station is shifting back to prominence in the satellite industry after rebounding from an uncertain fate. The iconic facility, which beamed the very first transatlantic television signals from the original Telstar satellite, was on the verge of demolition a few years ago after its previous owner, BT, had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73498"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}