Singapore satellite to serve Asia-Pacific

Singapore satellite to serve Asia-Pacific

SINGAPORE (AFP): Singapore launched yesterday a satellite
facility to serve the Asia-Pacific broadcasting industry in a
step towards reinforcing the city state's position as a regional
hub, officials said.

ST Teleport, a subsidiary of the Singapore Technologies Group,
is licensed to offer uplink-downlink facilities to broadcasters,
programmers, news bureaux and cable television companies.

The facility was launched by Minister for Information and the
Arts George Yeo, who said the name ST Teleport "conveyed
graphically the idea of Singapore as a junction node."

Yeo said ST Teleport was designed to have systems reliability
of "not less than 99.99 percent" and had the back-up of
uninterrupted power supply "24 hours a day, seven days a week."

"As with all other hub functions, the key is reliability and
flexibility," the minister said. "To succeeded as a
telecommunications and multi-media hub, we must have this
reputation for reliability."

"We can only be a hub by serving others, by serving others
better than they can serve themselves," Yeo said.

ST Teleport, built at a cost of S$15 million (US$10.71
million), has satellite links to major regional and international
satellites including Apstar-1, Rimsat G1 and Rimsat G2 and from
May, to PanAmSAT-4 and Palapa B2P.

It also has terrestrial links via fire-optic cables to
different parts of Singapore island, and is the third operator
licensed to offer satellite uplink facilities after Singapore
Telecoms and Singapore International Media.

The information minister used the occasion to stress the need
for Singapore to build up its information and information-
processing facilities to be able to discern the impact of future
technologies.

Yeo said Singapore had to beef up its technological
infrastructure to supplement its favorable geographical position
as the southern-most point of the Eurasian continent which all
ships must pass by between east and west.

Singapore needed to build what he called the "new
infrastructure to remain a junction for goods, services, people,
information and ideas."

"If we succeed, we will be one of a number of great cities in
the Pacific Century. If we fail, other hubs will displace us and
we will be relegated to a backwater," he warned.

"For example, what will be the impact of long-haul jumbo-jets
or sub-orbital hyper-sonic aircraft on Changi airport?" Yeo
expressed Singapore's resolve to develop the telecommunications
and multi-media industry to benefit international broadcasters,
and to make the city-state a "convenient and attractive place for
creative minds."

ST Teleport's parent company Singapore Technologies Group is
the largest industrial and technology-based group in Singapore
with a skilled workforce of 15,000 and with more than 100
companies spanning aerospace, shipbuilding, engineering besides
information technology, electronics and telecommunications.

The new facility will be a technical services and distribution
center for international television and hubbing center for the
broadcasting media, its promoters say.