Transporting Video Data, Overseas?

p0rkmaster asks: "I've been asked to try to research the cheapest way to get a fat pipe between San Jose, Calif. and the island of Guam. My client is the owner of 3 television stations on the island, and they buy most of their programming and do a lot of production work in a facility in San Jose. They are currently using the U.S. Postal Service to get them across the pond, which is introducing a 4-5 day lag. They are upgrading to digital facilities on the island and are interested in investigating moving the content over the Internet....or a private pipe. They would probably need a *minimum* of 15Mbit pipe to be able to handle their current requirements, which is 20 hours of NTSC-quality MPEG2 video a day. I'm guessing that in the near future they'll need to handle higher bandwidth when they begin broadcasting a digital signal. Any suggestions? Should I look at satellite services or a telco that can sell me space on the submarine fiber?"

Realistic pricing

[james b]

I really have no idea what I'm talking about here, so just ignore me :)

Isn't dumping 15mb/s, all day every day, going to be prohibitively expensive from your ISP? I understand that that kind of bandwidth is typically billed by volume, so you'll be paying the maximum possible rate.

For the prices I expect you would be paying for the bandwidth, it might be worth checking what kind of alternatives you have: Eg some kind of premium FedEx service instead of standard mail.

Reminds me of the old quote, "never underestimate the bandwidth of a speeding truck full of DAT tapes".

The bandwidth is there...

[psychosis]

I know that Andersen Air Force Base is on Guam, and with any AFB comes a decent amount of bandwidth. Since all of it is commercially provided (Leased from Sprint, etc.), that provider could possibly lease some of their pipe to your client.
I'd see if your client can get in touch with the appropriate folks on the base there to see who their provider is. If you need more info on this, please drop me an email. Hope it helps!

Re:Realistic pricing

[jbert]

> Reminds me of the old quote, "never underestimate the bandwidth of a speeding truck full of DAT tapes".

Which I think was updated with "or a 747 full of CD-ROMs".

ALthough as pointed out in the article, the problem being faced is latency, not bandwidth. (Have to admit, a 4-5 day ping would be fairly bad for Quake).

Isn't this an ideal application of satellite comms? High-bandwidth without significant latency requirements (they are currently dealing with 4-5 day latency, so 1s round trip shouldn't be a problem).

bandwidth of digital media

[jbridge21]

Broadcast-quality NTSC MPEG2 takes up 15 Mbps, if I remember correctly. So 20 hours a day you would do just fine with a 15 Mbps link.

The next-largest "standard" line I can think of is a T3, which gives you about 45 Mbps, or three times what you need. Unless you make special arrangements, you might have to do that. Although, if you were looking to expand, that WOULD let you pump out close to three stations running 24/7.
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This is what satellites were built for.

[human bean]

I know about this. In my youth I used to spend a great deal of time at the airport waiting for tapes to arrive.

Unless you have a requirement for serious backhaul services, just drop your three video feeds directly on any of the normal carrier's sat feeds, downlink at Guam, and rebroadcast.

End equipment costs will be a lot less than digital (for now, at any rate) and your most probable configuration is fairly normal (read: you can find someone to fix it).

Having seen what the military puts up with from FTS2001 and the commercial carriers, I would stay as far away from that sort of service as I could get.