Spaceway 3 is currently in service and Hughes is doing alpha and beta testing on it at the moment. I posted a breif summary of what I know and can say about it a while back but do not know what thread it was on.
This is what I can say for sure about the service at the moment. Hughes first does not and will not call the service Spaceway as many people are calling it now. Hughes will call it KA service and the current service KU service. The way the marketing system will work is so that the KA and KU service will not compete with each other. The main reason they want to do this is for customers who will not be able to see the current KA satellite will have another option. Basically they do not want to hype KA up to the point that a customer will think KU services will be second grade. The pricing and plans are expected to be close to the same as the current service.
As for the us the installer, in order to get certified for KA installations if you are a current tech you will need to go to the elearning site and go through training which includes a test similar to the one that was issued for the 7000 series modems.
The new modem series will be HN9xxx. The models they showed us were white and the design was totally different. Slightly smaller more boxed shaped and the lights were not as intense and the 6000 and 7000 models. The radio units are also different. The closely resemble the only style .98 and above units. The dishes will continue to remain the same Raven and Prodelin dishes as now but with an adaptor for the odu unit. Also depending on the customers package type the combination of ODU power wattage and the dishes will be greater than now. For instance you could have a customer with a 2 watt radio unit and only a .74 dish. The wattage for the new units will be 1, 2, 4, and 10. You will more than likely never see a 4 or 10 as they will primarily be used for uplink centers. The dishes will be .74, .98, 1.2, 1.8 and 2.4.
Be prepared to spend upward of 300 dollars for the tools needed to install the KA system. First the most important will be a GPS, they system commissioning process will need GPS degrees, minutes, and seconds entered instead of zip codes. Those coordinates need to be within 15 meters of were the dish is located in order for the modem to range properly and insure it is on the correct beam. There are something like 700+ beams system wide. I have a chart on my laptop with is out of commission at the moment, I will have it back running at the end part of next week and confirm that number. The other tools include a device similar to an OPI and a set of dithering tools that attach to the feedhorn and block a portion of the signal out in order to insure the system is peaked properly. There are 5 different signal strength values that need to be recored into the modem before the commissioning process will take place and they are impossible to do without these tools. This process does however take the place of cross polling
. There is also a tool needed if you are installing any of the Beta units "which you would know the same info I have if you are" that will need to be used called a fine AZ tool. This will be built onto the dish when the full rollout begins alone with a elevation tool, which is a good thing because the tool weighs about 20 pounds. Look for the built in version to be similar to the KA/KU dish setup directv uses.
The commissioning process is totally different also. They modem downloads new software before it is commissioned. One good thing about that is as you are pointing the modem will check to see what software version it is currently running "there are 3 by the way boot, operating and fallback if I am not mistaken" and update them as you are doing the dithering process. During this time the transmitter unit is not operational, only the receive side. After you verify that they system is peaked out they modem will automatically complete a 25 step commissioning process "don't worry some of the steps were pointing" during the commissioning process the customer also has the option to set up email accounts like the old 4000 software if you remember that.
You will learn some more basic info when they release it to the elearning site. Just keep and eye on that and it should post anytime. A couple of things I remember right off the top of my head are all Raven and .98 Prodelin dishes will not be scewed. The .74 Prodelin dish will however since it does have more of an oval shape. Hughes is also suppose to be working with Prodelin on the design of that dish in order to make it more durable. The software download also has a status bar on it which is really nice. You can track the progress a little closer than current. There will be 3 Home and 1 Business plan called an Elite plan. Residential customers will be the first to have the new service available the Enterprise after. The Spaceway 3 satellite is capable of handling up to 1000000 remote units. Depending on the first surge in demand Hughes does have the option for Spaceway 4, they want to see how the service will take off before they make their minds up on it. I suspect late March or April we will start seeing they public introduction.
Any other questions you may have just ask and I will let you know what I know. Alot of the info is fuzzy because its been a month since I was up there and they also had not made up minds on alot of stuff at that time. It was basically like we have you here and we are going to teach you this but before you can utilize it everything may change
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By the way. Those new OPI type devices, another reason they made the software were those are mandatory is they are serialized. So when you do your pointing and verify them the modem sends the stats to Hughes along with the serial number of the device that was used so they will know exactly who pointed the dish. Pretty cool huh. :haha:haha:haha