Australian Federal Police is hoping the arrival of Amazon’s Project Kuiper low earth orbit satellite service will resolve some of the challenges encountered with existing LEOsat services.
Chief technology officer Kristin Auld told the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations and Cloud Strategies summit in Sydney that the force had used LEOsat services in some of its operations, including when providing election support in the Solomon Islands, and more recently in enabling connectivity for personnel stationed on Norfolk Island.
It also uses LEOsats in “rapid deployment kits”, which can be taken out into the field and support forensic or cybercrime personnel when operating in remote areas.
Auld said that a broader role is envisioned for the technology, which could act as a communications backup for offices large and small, both in Australia and overseas.
But she said that a number of challenges had been encountered with the use of LEOsat-based services to date.
These ranged from security and geopolitical considerations, through to latency and capacity.
“We’ve got to think about the security of these things; who owns them, which is important for the AFP; but also things like non-static IP ranges, and whilst we can do lots of things to work around that and make it more secure, it’s not ideal,” Auld said.
“The speed, capacity and throughput are less than optional for business at the moment, so it might work for a very small office but maybe not for a large one, particularly one that’s going to rely on lots of exchanges of information around data as it does for the intelligence part of our business.
“And the coverage for Australia at the moment is not that great - because the companies that are out there doing this at the moment are mostly American, obviously the Northern Hemisphere has a bit of a focus. We do have some [coverage] down here, it’s getting better.
“We also have to consider for us when we’re deploying this in other countries that some countries will not allow us to use certain providers, so we have to have that consideration.”
Auld highlighted the impending arrival of Project Kuiper - which is anticipated to offer commercial services in 2025 - as a positive development in the LEOsat space.
“The great thing though is that … there’s some really good players coming into the scene now - Project Kuiper is using a whole lot of new technology around meshing of the LEOsats,” she said.
“They’re launching their satellites in the Southern Hemisphere first because they recognise that’s where the [coverage] hole is, so for us at AFP, things are looking really exciting.”
AFP is not the only high-profile organisation with an eye on Project Kuiper; earlier this year, Westpac also declared its interest in the service to bring banking services deeper into indigenous communities.
