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Volume 4 Issue 5May 2000

CCCSAT Digital Satellite Means Access

CCCSAT Staff

PART I
Access is the key issue in distance education," said Sherilyn Hargraves, Project Director for the California Community Colleges Satellite Network. CCCSAT will rely on technological advances to deliver video, audio, and Internet content via satellite. Whether students watch class on cable television, rent or purchase videos, download streaming media to home computers, chat online, or e-mail instructors or other students, their choices will allow education to fit a variety of lifestyles and learning styles. Satellite technology helps make these choices possible.

CCCSAT transmissions will be in MPEG formats. The send site at Palomar College encodes video, audio, and data transmissions into compressed MPEG-2 digital versions which travel to a PanAmSat satellite orbiting almost 22,300 miles above the earth. The satellite operates like a bent pipe, taking in information and beaming it back to earth where the receive sites decode, decompress, and deliver the information.

Satellite transmission is also a cost-effective way to deliver real time video to a large group of students. The number of students who can view a satellite transmission is only limited by the satellite’s footprint, or area of coverage, allowing CCCSAT to broadcast to students wherever they may be.

Satellites give CCCSAT the ability to provide clear video transmitted close to each student’s home, and to do so almost instantaneously. As John King, Vice President of Technical Services of bitcentral.com, explained, "From the time the word is spoken in Palomar to the time the student hears it in their ear is less than two seconds.

The use of satellites to transmit information is hardly news. What is new is the delivery of Internet broadband content, such as streaming media, via satellite. Streaming media is anything that continually downloads to the computer screen, such as video lectures, Internet radio stations, or online games. With steaming media, digitalization and the order in which the packets of digitalized information are delivered are crucial to the quality of the transmission.

Until very recently, streaming media reception on computers was often an exercise in frustration as the video or audio jumped, shivered, or even froze. CCCSAT’s use of satellite and digital technologies will deliver broadcast quality video to the home. When video or any other information is transmitted over land routes, it hops through many routers to reach the student’s home. Satellite transmission places that information much closer to the student in only one hop – from the sender to the satellite to the receiver. This closeness reduces the error rates, enhancing the quality of the video.

PART II: Broadband technology and distance education.