There is a Bengaluru stamp on the satellite earth station that Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated in Bhutan’s capital Thimpu on Saturday.
The earth station that will help drive various social services of the South Asia Satellite (SAS or GSAT-9) has been built and set up by the city-based Alpha Design Technologies Ltd.
In a major gesture of regional diplomacy, the Indian government in 2014 offered the services of a dedicated communications satellite to its smaller neighbours Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched the multi-use communications satellite in May 2017.
Multiple tasks
The SAS is meant to promote tele-education, tele-medicine, television broadcasting, weather forecasting, disaster monitoring and mapping of natural resources, besides aiding with banking services and governance among the South Asian countries. It also aims to strengthen cooperation among the people of the seven countries.
“A centralised hub along with radio frequency systems is essential to drive the applications of a satellite,” said ADTL’s founder and chairman and managing Director Colonel (retd.) H.S. Shankar.
Col. Shankar told The Hindu that the company won contracts in April 2018 to execute Ku-band SAS earth stations in all the six participating countries and New Delhi.
More to follow
“We completed the ground hub station on the DITT campus in Thimpu in nine months. The earth station in the Maldives has been executed. The Nepal one should be ready around December, we have set up trial sites there. We then take up Afghanistan and the others,” he said.
The Thimpu station started working in January after ISRO approved its performance.
Col. Shankar said the network was being used for broadcast applications on a 24x7 basis as well as for meeting the social and administrative requirements of Bhutan as planned.
Three employees of Alpha Design would remain in Thimpu to operate the station for two years. Over the next three years Alpha must train local personnel and maintain the infrastructure.
The network includes remote VSAT terminals put up at 110 locations across Bhutan and receiver terminals at 50 locations besides five portable terminals.
