One of the first businesses Boeing Satellite Systems began examining
after company vice-chairman Harry Stonecipher charged company execs
with meteoric growth was Digital Cinema.
Neither stars in their eyes nor stars in Hollywood, but dollar signs
and kudos drove Boeing Satellite to look at such an unlikely sounding
business.
At max (no, not Imax), it is worth only $1 billion a year, but Boeing
wanted the big screen presentation to show off its capabilities.
The idea: digitize a movie and beam it by satellite to the thousands
of movie theaters across the country-or across the world. Cut out
the endless copies shipped by FedEx to meet first run deadlines-just
beam it down, Scottie!
That doesn't sound very world-beating or important, hardly the sort
of business that would fit alongside designing Sonic Cruisers or
billion-dollar contracts for the newest warbird ot rocket launcher.
"That's right, but we wanted something that would grab everyone's
attention," Ron Maehl, senior business development VP at Boeing
Satellite Systems told Show News. "What we did is actually
very difficult to do, but the same principles apply to entering
a market for moving secure data that is worth trillions of dollars."
Central to BSS's demonstration to several thousand theater owners
that it could beam "Bounce" and "Spy Kids"-and
there may be an element of humor in those movie choices-is the ability
to take massive digital files and transmit them securely, rapidly
and accurately to a target audience over a network.
BSS used fiber optic cable and satellite transfers, not just satellites,
to get the data there in the most efficient way possible. Many satellite
and communications companies have been blinded by what is technically
possible, says Maehl, rather than focusing on what can be delivered
most economically-using only the technology needed.
"Some in past have looked at ultimate technology as a competitor,
defending a small piece of the market against a large piece of the
market, which is dumb. So we must ask: how do satellites fit in
for all sorts of different network solutions?
"For example, it makes no sense to go from here to Sao Paolo
by satellite when there is cheap fiber optic between here and there,
but it makes perfect sense to beam that signal from Sao Paolo to
a satellite to spread it over the whole of the country."
Boeing's Digital Cinema technology can be applied directly to moving
financial information around the world, or to the realty business,
where houses can be shown and clients' financial history vetted
on a secure upload/download link, saving hours of wasted time per
customer.
"We're not trying to compete with Federal Express," says
Maehl. "But we are showing the scope of what we can do. For
example, there are a lot of companies with their own networks for,
let's say, training videos. What if the trainee could call it up
on his or her laptop just when needed?"
Video on demand? Or movies on demand? Couldn't that revolutionize
Blockbuster? The possibilities are endless, and Maehl admits he
has to rein himself in to think what could be a good business-rather
than what's cool.
"What we want is to provide the networks and a wide range of
applications for these things to happen," he said. "We
don't want to be in those businesses ourselves. If we tried to enter
the consumer markets we would be slaughtered.
"But we can provide the basic infrastructure, and capitalize
our technology and systems integration capability to partner with
people who understand those businesses."
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