NBN’s second satellite — Sky Muster II — will launch on 5 October, the company said this morning. The launch will take place in the French Guiana Space Centre in South America.
The launch will come just over a year after the first satellite, Sky Muster, went into orbit. The combined system capacity of the two NBN satellites will be 135 gigabits per second.
Satellite is set to be used for some 0.4 per cent of premises — about 400,000 homes and businesses — slated to be hooked up to the National Broadband Network.
Retail service providers began selling Sky Muster services in April. End users can obtain speeds of up to 25/5 megabits per second on NBN’s satellite service.
Currently, there are more than 37,000 end users on NBN’s Interim Satellite Service.
“The NBN Sky Muster satellite service is transforming the day-to-day lives of people from all over the country,” NBN satellite architect Julia Dickinson said in a statement.
“We are already seeing how access to fast broadband for small businesses and farms in the most remote outback and offshore locations can improve productivity by better enabling the ability to store files in the cloud and avoid lengthy business trips by communicating with customers and suppliers through more reliable video conferencing.”
“This is an enormous project and we are doing our best to deliver the NBN Sky Muster service as fast as we can, but reaching all corners of the country will take some time,” Dickinson said.