Space may be the final frontier, but for Cisco it's also an untapped market. Rick Sanford, the company's exotically titled director of space initiatives, claims that the market around satellite communications, and their application to the defence industry, could be worth $1.4tn over the next ten years.
Head of the Global Defense and Space Group, a name that post-9/11 conjures up all sorts of images, Sanford claims space-based communications could be made a lot cheaper if the agencies involved adopted standards and technology from the terrestrial world.
Some of the immediate results of this push for reusability and cheaper components, he claims, could be cheaper satellite-based broadband services for those parts of the world, including rural areas of the UK, which will never receive terrestrial broadband access.
Cisco has already got a router in space, in a satellite built in conjunction with UK-based Surrey Satellite Technology. Successfully launched from Plesetsk in Russia last month, the satellite is part of a constellation of imaging and communications spacecraft built to aid emergency relief agencies: the Cisco router is part of a testbed for space-borne mobile IP applications.
ZDNet UK talked to Cisco's Rick Sanford about space networks.
So what does Cisco really think it can do to drive down the cost of satellite communications and space technologies in general?
The systems that are built for space are customised for each individual mission or satellite launch and the non-recurring mission costs are borne by that mission alone. When Company A builds a satellite they may use some of those elements in the next programme but if MoD UK awards the next programme to Company B, there is very little reuse of the technology. So what we have said is that if we look at the commercial telecommunications market and we look at going from proprietary protocols to those that have been ratified through the IEEE and the ITF, we see a dramatic reduction in cost and a significant increase in the interoperability of disparate systems. What we are attempting to do is apply this same model to space.
Can you give any real-life examples to illustrate all this?
That brings us round to the launch which represents our first chance to put our money where our mouth is. The Mobile Access Router 3251 is a 3.73 inch by 3.73 inch, commercially shipping router; you can buy it off our price list today. That was small enough and a power consumption of 10 watts, to be feasibly to be deployed on board the UKDMC satellite.
