WTA Announces the 2023 Independent Teleport Operator and Teleport Technology of the Year

New York, NY, March 14, 2023

The World Teleport Association (WTA) today announced the winners of the 28th annual Teleport Awards for Excellence during an exclusive awards ceremony at SATELLITE 2023. The awards are presented each year to organizations and individuals in the teleport industry whose achievements have been deemed exceptional by the international trade association and its awards committees, made up of industry members from across the globe.

The 2023 recipients are:

Independent Teleport Operator of the Year: US Electrodynamics, Inc. (USEI)
USEI is a privately owned, independently operated U.S. Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business. USEI has a worldwide staff of 57 employees. Today, both of USEI’s WTA Certified Tier 4 U.S. teleport locations operate 117 satellite antennas on USEI owned 260 land acres: West Coast Brewster, Washington U.S. and East Coast Vernon Valley, New Jersey U.S. These locations serve GEO in the POR, CONUS, and AOR and the Brewster LEO/MEO services are augmented with additional LEO/MEO ground station antennas around the world. USEI is also expanding its satellite communication capabilities to provide for emerging Cis-Lunar and Deep Space applications.

Within the past year, the USEI Brewster teleport was designated a primary site by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for interference-free C-band operation based on its grandfathered frequency protection and its RF-quiet rural location away from any major metropolitan locations. Subsequently, USEI Brewster worked with two major satellite providers for new C-band antennas. The largest provider engaged USEI as its General Construction Manager for the design, development and construction for a permanent and modularly expandable teleport facility on 10 acres as part of the USEI Brewster Teleport. A multi-million dollar Guaranteed Maximum Price Construction Service Agreement was signed effective May 2020 through December 2021 for a Phase 1 Design, Development & Construction Documents; a Phase 2 Antenna Foundations and an energy-efficient Energy Plant Facility Design and Construction; and a Phase 3 Antenna Foundations and two RF Shelters and Equipment Rack Installation. To date, all seven antennas have been installed, and the energy plant and infrastructure completed in 2021. This project included four 13M and three 7.3M C-band antenna foundations completed in late 2020 and in 2021 started supporting antenna installations; three 1.5 MW generators; two 750 kVA UPSs; and two additional electrical distribution/switchboards adding to the earlier upgraded extensive Brewster electrical distribution system. Click here to learn more about USEI.

Teleport Technology of the Year: CleanRF by INTEGRASYS
INTEGRASYS´ CleanRF is the best interference canceller available on the market, providing high quality communication in congested environments by cleaning the RF interference from the received signal at the satellite antenna. The solution enables secure and robust communications, protecting network terminals from the most common interference sources. In a world full of congested spectrum and frequency reallocation, CleanRF can effectively cancel harmful interference sources on satellite-to-ground links for GEO, MEO and LEO satellites. Moreover, it is the only tool capable of cancelling 5G over C-band interference on the rise in many developed countries, which have severely affected the satellite industry. CleanRF allows for the detection, identification, separation and cancellation of RFI sources that affect service signal, enabling satellite terminals to coexist with satellite and terrestrial interference.

Teleports are experiencing significant communication improvements with CleanRF, especially for customers that need to protect their links effectively against unintentional or intentional interference to achieve maximum service availability and resiliency. CleanRF is a transparent interference cancellation solution operating in the L-band cable between the antenna and satellite receiver equipment. It is purely software based, able to reside in an FPGA, in the cloud or integrated with any platform.

In the SATCOM domain, the most dramatic RFI problem is the so-called Adjacent Satellite Interference (ASI), followed by more occasional jamming events. The SATCOM industry has been conceiving and deploying technological solutions to combat the RFI problem, which causes millions of dollars in losses per year due to the loss of bandwidth and transmission delays. These solutions include using protected waveforms, incurring costs in extra bandwidth resources and potential interoperability problems, physical layer fingerprinting of some emissions with operational information, deploying ad-hoc coordination databases or developing sophisticated and expensive interference geolocation systems. The existent set of tools is able to resolve some interference types at the expense of a significant number of staff and technical resources and potential performance degradation. CleanRF provides an elegant, fully automated, zero-touch, zero-degradation solution to any interference problems affecting the industry, maximizing the amount of usable clean spectrum. Click here to learn more about CleanRF.

“This is the 28th time WTA has presented the Teleport Awards for Excellence and once again, the words ‘for excellence’ apply,” said WTA Director of Development Louis Zacharilla. “We again recognized companies headed by seasoned leaders who represent the traditional sector, the tech changes and the future of the teleport industry.”

In addition to honoring the winner from these two awards categories, WTA presented the 2023 Teleport Executive of the Year Award to Vladimir Rangelov, Director of Broadcasting Services at Vivacom at the Teleport Awards Luncheon. The reception attendees included teleport, satellite and content distribution technology industry executives, as well as previous awards recipients from around the world. WTA’s Director of Development Louis Zacharilla emceed the event.

The World Teleport Association (www.worldteleport.org) has been helping its members aim higher since our founding in 1985. Today, WTA is the leading partner in growth for teleport operators, advocating for their commercial interests and promoting excellence in their business practices, technology and operations. The association publishes best-practice reports and presents webinars on technology changes and their business and market impacts. It also presents events and awards and provides global certification and assessment programs to validate excellence and drive improvement. Aiming higher creates opportunity. Aiming higher brings risk. WTA is dedicated to helping its members seize the opportunities and manage the risks to find the paths to growth in a massively changing market.