Last month I was a presenter at the Hosted Payload Summit in Washington, DC. Part of my presentation included an analysis conducted by the Avascent Group that quantified the benefits of the hosted payload approach for government customers.

The Australian Defense Force (ADF) turned to Intelsat General for a UHF hosted payload aboard IS-22, launched earlier this year. Avascent conducted a review of the ADF hosted payload and found significant benefits in cost and schedule compared to alternative procurement strategies. Here's the pertinent slide from my presentation:

The IS-22 hosted payload delivered substantial reductions in cost and time to capability. As you can see, the ADF Hosted Payload was an incredible 180 percent less expensive than leasing the UHF bandwidth, and 50 percent less expensive than the ADF procuring a new satellite.

Time from contract signature to system availability was also greatly enhanced by taking the hosted payload approach. Leasing was not a viable option for the ADF due to legacy UHF satellites reaching end of life. Had the ADF chosen to procure a new satellite, the timeline would have been 47 months.

By choosing a hosted payload approach, the ADF cut that time to 35 months, accelerating availability by a full year.

These results are very encouraging. They validate hosted payloads as an alternative approach worthy of consideration in these times of accelerating SATCOM bandwidth requirements.