ABSTRACT
Satellites are classified by their usage and their technical characteristics. Satellite service areas vary widely in size, ranging from a metropolitan area to most of a hemisphere. The size of the service area is determined by the width of the satellite antenna beam, which, in turn, depends on the size of the satellite antenna—the larger the antenna, the narrower the beam. The most important differences between C-band and Ku-band fixed service satellites for television applications are frequency sharing, antenna size, downlink power limitation, costs, and rainfall attenuation. C-band earth station costs were lower, in part because they were manufactured in greater volume than Ku-band earth stations. This has changed with the growth of Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) in the Ku band; DBS earth stations are less than one-third the cost of backyard C-band stations. The cost of Ku-band transponders, either lease or sale, is substantially higher than C-band.
