Delivering satellite telecommunications to the Ministry of Defence, where quality of service can mean the difference between life and death

Satellite telecommunications services for military and government customers are required to provide reliable, flexible and secure communications, at short notice, anywhere in the world. The UK Armed Forces have come to rely increasingly on this capability. Under contract, Paradigm Services have taken over, from the UK Ministry of Defence, the provision and operation of MOD´s satellite telecommunications network. Paradigm delivers managed services across the military satcom network and makes customer care provision. Paradigm has two types of customer. Firstly, there are the Ministry of Defence officials who pay the bill and require proof that the service delivered is providing good value for money. Secondly, there are the end users, some of whom may be sitting in comfortable offices, while others may be in environmentally and/or militarily hostile areas. In a commercial network, these people would be the traditional customers who rely on the integrity of the network and whose day to day activities are impacted by the delivery of the service. QoS for individual users is important. Unlike commercial telecommunications systems, however, an end user cannot terminate their contract. But, if we get the QoS wrong, it can be the difference between life and death for some people. This is a big motivator. The paper discusses the issues around QoS delivery, where the end user is not the customer, in the traditional sense, but is the person impacted by the failure to deliver a quality service.