Gestalt VSAT service

Drawing on the example of one of BT´s (British Telecom) first SatStar customers, a French insurance company; the customer insists that their business is focussed on offering insurance services to their customers, not on running an extensive data network. When such a company chooses to employ an outside agency to cater for its wide area networking needs there are more issues to be covered than the provision of a satellite link from a remote site to a central hub point. Being able to take responsibility for the welfare of the customer´s application data from end to end requires a partnership between the customer and suppliers to the benefit of all parties. There are few suppliers who can genuinely deliver such an end to end solution across international boundaries which includes such detail as modification of the customer´s remote site equipment configuration and advising on application development issues, in addition to reliably transferring the customer´s data to the VSAT hub sites through any necessary protocol changes. The baseband element of the SatStar service is discussed because it is one of the most challenging aspects of the service provision illustrating the importance of getting `value for money´ from the connection between the customer and the hub equipment and ensuring that benefit is derived from profitably defining all of the interfaces; technical, political and commercial