Tooway
The first version of the service was launched in 2007 via two Eutelsat geostationary satellites, Hot Bird 6 and Eurobird 3, respectively at the 13° and 33° East orbital positions.
[1] At the end of 2010, Eutelsat launched KA-SAT, the first European High Throughput Satellite to operate in Ka band.
KA-SAT was positioned at 9° East, and delivers Internet access and broadcast services toward Europe and the Mediterranean Basin.
[4] Unserved and unsatisfied users were estimated to reach 30 million households in Western and Eastern Europe by 2010.
[9] In mid-2011, commercial use of KA-SAT with the SurfBeam 2 system from ViaSat allowed higher bit-rates and volumes at the same price over the European coverage area.
This improves waveform efficiency as opposed to Constant Code and Modulation which forces to apply the worst link budget to the entire spot.
[15] Poor alignment of the dish system results in higher error rates and a lower broadband speed.
Horizon Global Electronics manufactures a Test and Measurement meter specifically designed to align the Tooway dish.
HD-TC8 Applied Instruments also manufactures a Test and Measurement meter, the model Super Buddy 29, designed to align the Tooway dish.
Maxpeak AB (publ) manufactures a meter specifically for these new signals, SAM-plus (DVB-S2 ACM and VCM)[1].
A WiFi router may be connected to the satellite modem in order to deploy wireless Internet access in the home.
LED indicators on the modem front inform on satellite reception and transmission statuses (RX and TX) as well as on network activities.
Tooway domestic consumers are subject to a 1/50 contention rate which under peak loading, typically from 17:00 GMT onwards can result in heavily degraded performance for applications such as streaming media services which manifests as pausing, buffering and heavily pixellated pictures.
