New business nbn™ Satellite Service lands to offer remote businesses a boost in digital capability.

Businesses in remote Australia can now experience the benefits of access to business grade services via the launch of business nbn™ Satellite Service.

Designed to support the increasing digital needs of medium and large businesses in remote and rural areas, the new wholesale offering aims to help more Australian businesses to compete and scale by lifting digital capability.

Research by Telsyte (commissioned by NBN Co) shows businesses in remote parts of Australia are increasingly using digital applications including cloud storage, monitoring services, real-time sensors, and videoconferencing.†

And that’s exactly what business nbn™ Satellite Service is designed to support.

business nbn™ Satellite Service

How it works

Our new wholesale business nbn™ Satellite Service operates via NBN Co’s two existing Sky Muster™ satellites and ground stations in addition to its own purpose-built infrastructure.

Underutilised spectrum from our existing Sky Muster™ satellite service has been allocated specifically to the new offering. At less than 15 per cent of its overall wholesale capacity, this helps ensure continued wholesale capacity for Sky Muster™ residential users.

Plus, existing high-capacity, high-frequency ‘Ka-Band’ frequency with innovative spot-beam architecture is being used to provide businesses with broadband internet services to even some of the most remote parts of Australia.

The initial products

By 2021, according to the research, the number of Australian businesses using satellite services is anticipated to grow by more than 30 per cent.

Telsyte also forecasts a surge in business-related IoT devices – more than doubling from an average 39 today to 82 in 2021 – helped along by satellite connectivity.

Accordingly, the first wholesale business nbn™ Satellite Service products available focus on remote business needs for high-data capacity and IoT.

All business nbn™ Satellite Service wholesale products are planned to offer a range of configurable options, as well as a choice of three business-grade service assurance levels managed via NBN Co’s Business Satellite Operations Centre, which will help to manage customer connections, service requests and incidents.

There are two main wholesale products now available:  

Virtual Internet Service Product

Virtual Internet Service Product (VISP) has been designed for remote customers with high-data consumption needs. Remote businesses using data-critical apps, such as cloud-based services,† can choose a plan based on three wholesale speeds – 30/1Mbps^#, 30/5Mbps^# or symmetrical 13/13Mbps^#, which includes up to 1000GB of monthly data*, and a default Bronze-level service assurance that can be upgraded to Silver or Gold.

Internet of Things

For remote businesses that require connectivity to monitor infrastructure, such as sensors and monitoring systems for data collection,† our Internet of Things wholesale solution provides committed or peak wholesale speeds as low as 10/10Kbps^# (and up to 2/2Mbps^#) so customers are only paying for the bandwidth they need.

Customers have the option of Committed Information Rate or Peak Information Rate wholesale bandwidth profiles and a Bronze-level service assurance with the option to upgrade to Silver or Gold.  

Willis Island trials business nbn™ Satellite Service

Already enjoying the benefits that business nbn™ Satellite Service can bring is Willis Island, which recently trialled the new offering.

Located 450 kilometres off the coast of Cairns, Willis Island may be tiny but is home to a Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) weather monitoring station that was established back in 1921.

One of 60 BoM sites across Australia, Willis Island was seeking better coverage for the six-monthly rotating roster of four scientists.

Despite being at the very edge of nbn™ Sky Muster™ coverage, which spans 93 per cent of Australia’s landmass, a larger-than-normal satellite dish (1.8 metres instead of 1.2m) proved to be the solution.

After overcoming other installation-related hurdles, including logistics to the remote island, the result was a success.

So happy was BoM with the result that, just a week-and-a-half after that first installation, it requested a second business nbn™ Satellite Service on the island for its corporate network.^~

Get your business nbn™ Satellite Service connected

An additional product – Access Bandwidth Service – is planned for launch in 2020, designed to provide committed wholesale bandwidth profiles for large enterprise and government customers.

^ Fair Use Policy and shaping apply. To proactively protect and ensure the fair access to the nbn network for all users, nbn may from time to time, at its discretion, shape the following activities to maximum wholesale upload and download speeds of 256kbps; uploads and downloads via peer to peer; uploads and downloads to cloud storage platforms; PC and smartphone operating system updates; software/application updates; gaming software updates; any other traffic related to applications which nbn cannot identify. Other activity that nbn considers may cause adverse network impacts may also be added to the above list to be shaped, including streaming video and VPN.

† An end customer’s experience using the business nbn™ Satellite Service, including speeds and other performance characteristics, depend on a range of factors, such as the latency limitations inherent in satellite communications, the particular product and product features that have been selected by the service provider, the configuration of the products and product features being delivered, the time of usage in relation to certain internet-based access products, and other factors outside of nbn’s control (like their equipment quality, software, chosen broadband plan, signal reception, or how their service provider designs its network).

* If the monthly data quota is exceeded, additional data is automatically charged in 100GB increments.

# nbn provides wholesale services to phone and internet providers. nbn™ wholesale speed tiers available to providers vary depending on the business nbn™ Satellite Service product selected. An end customer’s experience using the business nbn™ Satellite Service, including speeds and other performance characteristics, depend on a range of factors, such as the latency limitations inherent in satellite communications, the particular product and product features that have been selected by the service provider, the configuration of the products and product features being delivered, the time of usage in relation to certain internet-based access products, and other factors outside of nbn’s control (like their equipment quality, software, chosen broadband plan, signal reception, or how their service provider designs its network).

~ nbn is very happy with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s experience with the nbn™ broadband access network. Of course, end user experiences may vary. An end customer’s experience using the business nbn™ Satellite Service, including speeds and other performance characteristics, depend on a range of factors, such as the latency limitations inherent in satellite communications, the particular product and product features that have been selected by the service provider, the configuration of the products and product features being delivered, the time of usage in relation to certain internet-based access products, and other factors outside of nbn’s control (like their equipment quality, software, chosen broadband plan, signal reception, or how their service provider designs its network).