Business Insider ABC - Company makes history with satellite plan
Company makes history with satellite plan
Space may still be the final frontier but technology is making the earth and its environments seem that much smaller....
NICOLA WEBBER, ABC BUSINESS INSIDER REPORTER: Space may still be the final frontier but technology is making the earth and its environments seem that much smaller. One Australian company is already winning world recognition for its space communication facilities. Now it's going where no other Australian company has gone before and sending its own satellite into space.
ADRIAN BALLINTINE, CEO, NEWSAT: It's an ambitious program. We believe that in late 2012 you will see this company launch Australia's first commercial, geo-stationary satellite.
NICOLA WEBBER: NewSat operates out of Melbourne but its main assets are two large teleports - one in Adelaide and one in Perth.
ADRIAN BALLINTINE: They comprise 23 very large antenna. Those antenna broadcast to a number of various satellites in the sky. So it is an enormous complex and we have, if you like, space hubs on the ground talking to intelligent communication satellites in the sky.
NICOLA WEBBER: NewSat CEO Adrian Ballintine and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen launched the company 11 years ago as a multimedia business. It survived the dotcom crash and was re-engineered as a space and satellite company.
ADRIAN BALLINTINE: Now, if you imagine the world as being 360 degrees, which it is, and if you imagine at every two degrees around the equator there is a parking slot.
And that's a parking slot for a satellite. And so you can imagine there's 180 slots around the circumference and in those slots are very large satellites. And people like NewSat, through their teleports, keep those satellites in their trajectory.
So often our customers are in remote parts of Australia, or on oil platforms. When people need to broadcast in very remote parts of Australia where there is no copper, where there is no wire in the ground, satellite is an obvious choice.
NICOLA WEBBER: NewSat has a strong base of customers in Australia, the Middle East and Africa.
ADRIAN BALLINTINE: We have significant business with the US military, the oil, gas and mining giants of Australia, and also with oil, gas and mining giants from around the world.
We do very simple things for all of those communities, such as broadcast video, voice and data but we also do very complex activities such as creating software that would, for example, monitor the amount of gas that flows through a pipeline in north-west Australia.
NICOLA WEBBER: But satellites are becoming very crowded real estate. NewSat established a subsidiary company, Jabiru, to launch its satellite and a launch date is booked for December 2012.
ADRIAN BALLINTINE: It's quite amazing that Australia has never had an organisation that was Australian based, that was able to launch its own satellite.
And there are very few companies in the world that after they've launched their first satellite are not already thinking about satellite number two and three.
NICOLA WEBBER: NewSat is a listed company with revenue of $30 million a year, no debt and now turning a profit. But launching your own satellite does not come cheaply.
ADRIAN BALLINTINE: The project is in the order of $400 million. So the combination of debt, equity and export development will ensure that we are well funded for the project. We have demonstrated to the insurers and space companies that we know our business and we know our worth and so we have no shortage of people wishing to partner with us.
NICOLA WEBBER: NewSat hopes its space experience will launch it straight into the proposed national broadband network.
ADRIAN BALLINTINE: A) Because that's the business we're in, b) Because we employ the most people in that regard, and c) Because the world would recognise that NewSat slash Jabiru is Australia's most pre-eminent space organisation.
NICOLA WEBBER: Recognition is already coming NewSat's way. The company was a finalist in the recent international teleport awards announced in Washington DC.
ADRIAN BALLINTINE: It's also a signal to people who are making decisions in Australia whether it’s corporate Australia or whether it's the government that you've got a home grown company here, owned by a bunch of Australian people, who are right at the forefront of world technology.
