Delareyville (NW) Satellite Earth Station

[abjater]

Just learnt tonight that there is a satellite earth station just outside Delareyville in NW province. Seems to be a joint venture with Globalstar, Telkom, Alcatel and Vodacom/fone.

http://streetmaps.co.za/?x=25.460112...0.00143125&s=h

Doing some research, seems this station was completed in 1999 at a cost of around R 200 million, that should have given Vodacom users the option of, when out of terrestrial coverage, use a Glabalstar satellite signal (on the specific handset). Seems 4 sat's were planned to cover Southern Africa. With some nice data capabilities as well. Now, something like this would have revolutionised our Telecoms industry and penetration into low density areas with this kind of service.

Does any of our esteemed forum members know any more about this? Seems those 4 dishes are pointing like in straight upwards (parked and locked position), and looking at the Globalstar website, no coverage yet in SA - and that 10 years after the earth station was constructed. Unfortunately we all know SA: things tend to just disappear, get stolen, borrowed ... and this seems like a non-operational site when looking at the images on Google's Streetview:

http://maps.google.co.za/?ll=-26.676...00.52,,1,-0.77

I would like to get some more information and comments: why a site like this at Delareyville (and not Crowthorne or close to major Telkom infrastructure) ... why a partnership with Globalstar / Alcatel ... is this operational at all ... if not, what was the fault/failure/issues in not giving the consumer this superb service ???

Maybe the Telkom and Vodacom reps on here can chime in. But would like to hear from other telecom fundi's aswell!

Sorry for going ever so slightly off topic!

[ponder]

No.

[rpm]

Hi abjater

A great post - thanks for sharing.

I saw fibre infrastructure being put down in that area (along the national roads), and at the time wondered what it was for. I certainly do not think that it was meant to connect this satellite earth station, but it may connect it on the way. Will see if I can find out anything more.

[ponder]

I saw fibre infrastructure being put down in that area (along the national roads), and at the time wondered what it was for.

It's for Telkoms billing system so lets not disalude ourselves

[abjater]

I know Telkom has a lot of fibre all over and according to a map I just found, they have a major route running past Delareyville. But then again, it can be DFA, Infraco, Fibreco, or cellular networks putting additional lines down.
As you said, we can pretty much assume an earth station would need fibre, and I guess that was part of the R200mill initial project. Looking at the StreetView images, one can see a line going down close to the building (and some broken lines a few poles further!

Interesting one: http://www.ubuntunet.net/sites/ubunt...bre_Map_v6.pdf Not sure how up to date.

Thread-jacking myself!

[abjater]

Seems like it was an over abundance of red tape and politics "killing" the project in SA....
http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/art...ape-2000-04-14
... Leaving us with presumably another rather expensive techno-white-elephant

[MickeyD]

This is not Telkom's primary Satellite Earth Station but its secondary one.

Their main site is at Hartbeeshoek. - http://telkom.investoreports.com/tel...-south-africa/

The multi-billion rand Hartebeeshoek satellite station lies deep in a valley between Krugersdorp and Hartbeespoort Dam. Since its opening in 1975 it has relayed literally billions of signals from two satellites deep in space to South Africa’s data, television and voice units, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

They also have a disaster recover data centre at the site. - http://www.cybernest.co.za/cn/news/news_article_3.jsp

The Hartebeeshoek data centre in the Magaliesburg, which is used mostly for disaster recovery, also provides extended high availability with the two Centurion centres. The distances between Centurion and Hartebeeshoek are far enough to be used for disaster recovery, while still being close enough to support high availability architectures like server metro-clustering and synchronous storage replication.

The old satellite station is closer to the turn-off from the main road and is now the Hartebeeshoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (after some equipment replacements over the years!). - http://www.hartrao.ac.za/

The SA National Space Agency also has their station in the area. - http://sansa.org.za/home.aspx

[abjater]

MickeyD,

Interesting what you said there. However, this Delareyville site is/was more intended for Globalstar comms up/downlinks than radio astronomy, etc as what seems to be conducted at Hartebeesthoek. Remember Crowthorne in Jhb is supposedly Telkoms Primary Earth Station for voice and data comms. Interesting links you gave!

Seems like 4 different sites they have at Hartebeesthoek with a vast collection of antennae.



Crowthorne, which is marked as a Telkom Teleport:

[MickeyD]

Interesting what you said there. However, this Delareyville site is/was more intended for Globalstar comms up/downlinks than radio astronomy, etc as what seems to be conducted at Hartebeesthoek. Remember Crowthorne in Jhb is supposedly Telkoms Primary Earth Station for voice and data comms. Interesting links you gave!

Seems like 4 different sites they have at Hartebeesthoek with a vast collection of antennae.

iirc the Sats2 pin on your map is Telkom's. Sats4 was their very old site. Long time since I was there!

Hartbeeshoek is the primary earth station, however different primary services are offered from each site. They both provide full redundancy for each other. http://mybroadband.co.za/news/teleco...re-a-case.html

EDIT: just to add that Telkom also have a fully fledged Data Centre at Hartbeeshoek (and not at Crowthorne).

[abjater]

Aah. Good to have some one with first hand info on the sites ;-)
Data centre in the vlaktes at Hartebeesthoek! yes, Crowthorne only a Teleport, as I have it too.

[idirect]

The Delareyville earth station was for Globalstar. Never used, there were about ten of them built around the world. The Globalstar business is running now but coverage of the service does not inlcude Sub-Saharan Africa.

There are four earth stations near Hartebeesthoek:
The Telkom one is is marked as sats2 on the map. They have three 32 m antennas and a few others. Extremely large C-band antennas like these 32 m jobs are no longer required and there is not much traffic through this earth station anymore apart from some satellite-based interconnects and their rural telephony platforms.

Sats4 is the ICO earth station, another JV that Telkom was part of that failed dismally. This earth station is in mothballs.

Sat1 is the CSIR earth station "satellite application center" and their satellite tracking station that forms part of the international monitoring network, used by NASA and other organistaions to track rocket launches, etc. http://www.csir.co.za/SAC/index.html

Sats3 is HartRAO which is a radio observatory... http://www.hartrao.ac.za/

Crowthorne is used for international data circuits mainly, many of their multinational clients use this earth station for redundant satellite circuits to back-up terretsrial circuits.