Nera's broadband over satellite system gets approval from US Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA)
7th June 2005; DISA recommends the open standard DVB-RCS for two-way broadband over satellite systems for the US military and places Nera's system on a shortlist of qualified products.
"Given their influence on the US and global defence market, DISA's recommendation of the DVB-RCS standard and approval of the Nera SatLink represents a significant market opportunity for Nera", comments Bjørn Platou, Senior Vice President Sales and Marketing at Nera.
The US Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is responsible for implementing and supporting net-centric solutions for the domestic and global operations of the US Government in general and the Department of Defense in particular. One of DISA's tasks is to identify, test and recommend new communications technologies and solutions.
DISA has just completed a review of two-way broadband over satellite systems and concluded that the open standard DVB-RCS (Digitial Video Broadcasting - Return Channel via Satellite) system is best suited to meeting their requirements. "DVB-RCS meets our technical requirements and is very bandwidth efficient. Moreover, the open standard allows us to be vendor independent and to choose equipment from more than one vendor in the same system, which is strategically important to DISA", says Bruce Bennett, Chief Terrestrial Network Engineering Branch, DISA.
DISA has evaluated equipment from eleven suppliers of DVB-RCS compliant systems.
Only two of these suppliers have been qualified for the agency's Qualified Product List with Nera being one of them. Interoperability between the two qualified products was also tested successfully. The Qualified Product List is a list of recommended products used by the various entities of the US armed forces when purchasing communications equipment and solutions.
The Nera SatLink system has been implemented by satellite operators all over the World and was also used successfully during NATO's 2004 Joint Warfighter Interoperability Demonstration. One of the applications used was multicasting to satellite terminals on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Nera SatLink system provides broadband access via satellite and supports a wide range of applications, including internet access, email, voice over IP, videoconferencing, multicasting and Virtual Private Networks.