Towards a more secure future with mobile data communications

A case for Little LEO systems

Arnold Ph. Djiwatampu
President, PT. TT-Tel Consulting
Indonesia

The terrible events on the peaceful island of Bali in the Indonesian archipelago last year brought close to home a heightened awareness of the insecure world in which we live. Big cities of the world are not immune to danger. Remote islands are also exposed. There are no safe havens anywhere. Thus, we all have a role, wherever we may live and work, to help shape a more secure future and a more just society because the two goals are very much intertwined.

Those of us who are privileged to work in telecommunications can look to our industry for solutions appropriate to the times. Global security is an obvious and urgent need now and on a sustained basis in the future. How then can telecommunications serve this noble mission to help create and sustain a condition of greater security around the world for all peoples while contributing to social justice?

Of course, we know that there is not a single system in telecommunications — satellite or terrestrial — that can do everything necessary to support global security and a more just society. Each system has an inherent technical capability or “specialty” enabling what it can do best. In the aggregate, however, telecommunication systems represent a powerful tool for peace and justice.

Our challenge then is to unleash the potential of these systems so that they can go forward in the global marketplace and fulfil their part of the overall mission. There has never been as important a forum as this World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-03) to make these things possible for peace.

WRC-03 Agenda item 1.16

This agenda item will require WRC-03 delegates to consider, for example, allocations in feeder links around 1.4 GHz for mobile-satellite systems that have service links below 1 GHz. These systems are known popularly as Little LEO systems. Operating at low illumination or power levels to avoid interference with existing or nearby band users and optimized for band sharing, these systems provide digital store-and-forward data communications for asset tracking, remote monitoring and control and messaging.

The Little LEO industry has not received any additional global allocations from the international regulators since the World Radio Administrative Conference of 1992 (WARC-92) — even though the demand for additional spectrum has been well documented. Many bands below 1 GHz have been proposed at earlier WRCs, but the proponents have not been successful because of competing pressures.

Since 1996, and because of the failure of previous WRCs to allocate spectrum, the Little LEO industry with service links below 1 GHz has been encouraged to study bands above 1 GHz for feeder link operations. Sharing studies and demonstrations have been going on since then and reported in the various forums within the ITU process. In the international context, the 1390 –1393 MHz and 1429–1432 MHz bands have been identified as the frequencies suitable and available for global allocations for feeder link operations for Little LEO systems.

Addressing global security

How do Little LEO applications, such as asset tracking and messaging, serve to promote greater security and justice for our world?

Let me take one example of a tremendous threat facing the busy harbours and ports around the world from Singapore and Shanghai to Hong Kong and Rotterdam.

There are some 15 million shipping containers in circulation on a global basis. These containers facilitate a growing import/export trading chain strategically important to the world’s economies. At the same time, the contents of these containers present a major security concern.

The commercial environment for containers is both global and inter-modal, which means that the containers use various transportation modes (such as ships, trains, trucks) to reach their final destination. The challenge then is to document the contents of the containers, then to track their location anywhere in the world on any transportation mode or loading facility, and to identify any deviation of routing or tampering with contents.

Little LEO systems are optimized for asset-tracking globally and inter-modally, and could provide certain solutions to help create a secure global transport system. What is equally important is that Little LEO systems can facilitate certain data communication solutions on a cost-effective, unobtrusive and routine basis. This is exactly what is needed in this area of global security because the effort will need to be sustained for years to come, not just now or in the foreseeable future.

Addressing social justice

Let me also cite an example of how to address the social justice issue with Little LEO systems. The Istanbul Declaration, one of the outcomes of the World Telecommunication Development Conference 2002 (WTDC-02), recognized that “Universal access to information and communication technologies (ICT) is widely viewed as a key to economic prosperity” and that “new technologies have a significant impact on the expansion of telecommunications and have the potential to close the widening gap not only between developing and developed countries, but also between urban and rural areas and between well-served and underserved areas within a country.”

Furthermore, the report of the WTDC-02 Chairman on the Special Session on “Bridging the Digital Divide” reinforced the common view of the link between ICT and socio-economic benefits: “The digital divide is no longer defined in terms of lack of access to telephones, but rather in terms of lack of access to ICTs…”

Indonesia is a vast country of 220 million people living on 17 000 islands, with 70 000 villages across an archipelago stretching over an area similar to that from the West Coast to the East Coast of the United States, or more outstretched than from Dublin (Ireland) to Moscow. Similar situations in other countries in the Asia-Pacific, Africa and Latin America would also require these new satellite technologies to be able to cover the outstretched areas with modern information technologies. We are committed to bringing the socio-economic benefits of universal access to ICTs and service affordability to the people of Indonesia and other countries as a positive means of bridging the digital divide. That is why the allocation for additional feeder link under Agenda item 1.16 is crucial for developing an affordable non-geostationary non-voice mobile satellite system.

It is well known that Little LEO systems have the capability to cost-effectively serve not only urban populations but more importantly, for social justice considerations, the remote and rural places of this Earth where the benefits of technology have been slow in arriving. Little LEO systems, for example, can bring two-way paging and messaging, including e-mail, to places that have no other affordable options.

Hopefully, those delegates to the WRC-03 in Geneva who, in the past, supported the large billion dollar technologies (whether satellite or terrestrial, mobile or fixed) will now give a chance to the much lower-cost Little LEO systems to survive and thrive.

Little LEO narrowband technology is proven. The market for rural and remote messaging is recognized as needing these basic services. What is still missing is the commitment of people of good will to respond to this moral imperative and therefore allow the growth of the Little LEO industry.

Conclusion

We are on the eve of an important decision for the Little LEO industry. Delegates at WRC-03 can decide to continue to hold back this emerging industry or to allow it to go forward with sufficient spectrum.

If, after over 12 years, the regulators finally allocate additional global spectrum to this industry, Little LEO systems will be enabled to deliver their benefits to a waiting world. Obviously, Little LEO systems will not solve all the problems of security and justice in our world, but they can play a part in achieving the noble goals of security and justice that only the limits of imagination can contain. Who then could deny them this last chance?