The Year of Living Dangerously" is a great 1983 film by Australian director Peter Weir about an Aussie  journalist (Mel Gibson) covering political turmoil in Indonesia during the reign of Sukarno. He gets caught up in the chaos of an abortive Communist revolution and manages to escape, barely, with his life.

With the introduction of digital TV a new way of video transport and delivery has emerged, using the Internet Protocol (IP). Video over IP is a general term to describe the use of IP in any or all stages of video transport to the subscriber (or end-customer). This has to be distinguished from the term IPTV, which means specifically the delivery of video as an IP stream to the subscriber set-top box or TV set. All digital video today that is broadcast, transported over satellite or distributed in cable systems is using the MPEG transport stream (TS) communications protocol.

My previous column for this publication focused on the oil and gas exploration and production sector, with particular reference to the increasing attention of the energy industry on deepwater and ultra-deepwater hydrocarbon reserves which now appear to be much more abundant than was thought ten years ago.

The next Pacific Telecommunications Conference, PTC ’10, will again focus on a hot topic for many in the telecommunication and IT industries, "cloud computing". While seemingly esoteric to many, especially some in the sometimes insular satellite sector, cloud computing is coming to dominate the thinking of planners and implementers in many telecommunications and IT sectors.

by Martin Jarrold, Chief, International Programs Development, GVF

Deployment of broadband satellite technologies is correctly recognized as an imperative to maximization of cutting-edge digital oilfield applications and to considerations of cost-effectiveness – it is a force multiplier, enabling return on investment, as well as facilitating mission critical communications links.

Phew…we survived! That seemed to be the expression on everyone’s lips at the recently-concluded Satellite Business Week organized by EuroConsult held in Paris from 7-10 September. There was a definite feeling of relief in the air. Relief that the recession hadn’t hit the satellite companies as badly as it had other industries. A sentiment that probably isn’t shared by companies that recently filed for bankruptcy such as ICO Global, Protostar and SeaLaunch-all but the latter were noticeably absent this year.

by Lou Zacharilla, Dir. of Development, SSPI

At the recent Satellite Business Week summit in Paris, the buzz centered around emerging markets for broadband and mobile services, as well as an increased use of satellites in support of emerging economies in Africa, observational and environmental sciences and the appetite of the global enterprise.

by Robert Bell, World Teleport Association

"Bursty," as you probably know, is a term for communications traffic that unexpectedly lurches from low data rates to high data rates. It is hard to deal with because it presents two unpleasant alternatives: sizing the circuit to handle the maximum requirement, which leaves a lot of expensive capacity idle, or settling for less capacity and knowing that service will slow to a crawl during periods of peak demand. The latest shared-bandwidth and bandwidth-on-demand solutions are specifically designed to deal with bursty traffic.

Businesses, among them the likes of Nokia, HP, Microsoft, Apple, and others are turning to satellite experts to help them rev up their events. Satellites offer nationwide and global reach, letting you share your message cost-effectively with virtually any authorized and equipped site, and there are thousands of satellite-capable venues available around the world. Thanks to huge improvements in recent years in the cost-efficiency of satellite and video technology, satellite links are more affordable than ever before.

Simply put, 2008 and the first half of 2009 have been years best described in 1992 by Queen Elizabeth as annus horribillis. In other words, they really stunk. This is obvious to the millions of men and women dangerously out of work everywhere; to the North American auto industry; to those dependent on financial services for credit or to make payroll, and to the billions of folks in Asia who were raised out of poverty during the past two decades, but who find their rising economic circumstances in peril.