Satellites often sit at the edge of the network. The "orbital last
mile" for individual users as well as in-country (Africa for e.g.) ISPs
and Enterprise networks. When they go, often there is no backup (except
maybe another satellite connection).
Sean Donelan wrote:
On Tue, 6 Jan 2009, Paul Donner wrote:
WRT Kevin's query, if you are concerned about a solar incident and
it's affects on satcom, you might want to take a look at what user
base (e.g. which mobile users and what impact loss of comm will have
on what they are doing) is affected rather than understanding the
volumes that are affected as this might provide a much more thorough
understanding of any impact. But that is merely my two cents worth.
Yep, consider the Galaxy IV satellite incident. The loss of a single
satellite had a significant impact on its user population for several
days/month. Other satellites can be moved into an orbital slot, and
dishes can be re-pointed; but Galaxy IV lead to some interesting (i.e.
unexpected to some users) failures. I'm not sure how many hospitals
realized their "in-house" pager systems relied on a satellite.