Methera Preparatory Phase

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The need for affordable, high speed broadband services to rural areas of un(der)served nations is underlined by the United Nations and the ITU. Satellite service offerings are not yet viable for general consumers: monthly costs of satellite bandwidth and initial installed cost of user equipment are too high; outdoor units are too large ; and total available capacity and capacity density are too low and inflexible to form a significant component (eg 10-20%) of a national broadband infrastructure. Terrestrial technologies are also costly and impractical over very large sparsely populated areas and so isolated homes, businesses and communities are currently left disadvantaged. Methera is planned as a flexible constellation of MEO satellites to help fill the gap for partner nations who will be able to provide these services to small, low cost user terminals, at prices competitive with terrestrial technologies. Methera will be capable of providing 300- 1000Gbps capacity to each of 5-15 partner nations distributed around the globe. This study will allow the team to design and model the system and predict the distribution of capacity, cost and performance which can be delivered to meet the national rural broadband market needs of prospective participants which will hopefully lead to advanced sales.