India to launch three satellites in next 18 months

22 May 2017
00:00

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has outlined plans to deploy three more communications satellites in the next 18 months.

The first of these satellites, the GSAT-19, will launch in June, the Economic Timesreported. This will be followed by the GSAT-11 by the end of the year and GSAT-20 by end-2018.

All the new satellites will use multiple spot beams to provide concentrated coverage to the entire country, the report states.

The GSAT-19 will have eight spot beam and a data transfer rate of 4Gbps, whereas the GSAT-11 will have 16 beams and a data rate of 13Gbps and the GSAT-20 will use 40 dual-polarized beams with a data rate of 60-70Gbps.

While India recently overtook the US to become the world's second largest internet market after China, its average internet connection speed is far behind regional peers. Akamai estimates that India's average speed was just 4.1Mbps, placing it at just 105th in the world, and far behind regional leaders such as South Korea (26.3Mbps) and Hong Kong (20Mbps).

The new satellites are expected to help address this shortfall and usher in an era of high-speed internet connectivity, the report states.

The ISRO has so far launched 13 locally-developed GSAT communications satellites, with nine currently in service.

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