§ Mr. KeyTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to his answer of 8 June 1999,Official Report, column 211, on satellite dishes, for what reason there will be a 12-hour delay between transmission and viewing by ships' crews. [86874]
§ Mr. Doug HendersonThe transmissions are received by RN ships using existing military satellite communications equipment, which was not designed to take video transmissions. The band width required for normal video transmission is considerably greater than that available on our military satellite system. However, recent developments in transmission technology now allow for the broadcast of compressed video transmissions over such systems. The time taken to transit the information in this way is dependent on the available band width. The drawback of this system is that the images cannot be viewed until all the video information has been received. On occasions where there is heavy use of the system for military communications, which have priority, only a reduced band width is available for video transmission. This means that there could be delays of up to 12 hours before one hour of material for viewing can be made available to the ships' crew. The advantage of utilising the military satellite system is that coverage is achieved over sea and land, whereas commercial satellite transmissions are generally directed towards land only. Large satellite dishes can provide limited coverage for vessels at sea, such as cruise ships, but there is no room to fit such dishes on frigates.