Satellites and ISDN

ISDN (integrated-services digital network) implementation in Europe is still slow in some countries mainly due to time and investment constraints on upgrading the terrestrial network. It is suggested that using satellites can, in the early phase of ISDN development, speed up the process by providing faster and more flexible paths over a wider area than the terrestrial network and by offering a high degree of user penetration. In the long term, the satellite will continue to provide 64-kb/s links in some advantageous cases and will also provide the infrastructure and flexibility for the implementation of the future broadband ISDN. EUTELSAT can offer ISDN quality on most of its first-generation satellite services, and its second generation has been designed to meet the CCIR ISDN satellite-link requirements. The adoption of innovative concepts on future satellite generations, such as onboard processing, will make them even more suitable to an ISDN environment and to its users.<>