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.