Hughes, an American defence and telecommunications company, has launched its DirecPC service which can transmit up to 3 Mbps of data directly to a home dish and receiver. Astra is owned by the Luxembourg-based company Societe Europeene des Satellites, and has launched Astra-Net for fast satellite data delivery to PCs. SES has also announced plans to offer an interactive multimedia service, with tests being conducted in the new Ka-band from the Astra 1 H satellite. Astra 1 H will use two transponders operating at the Ka band. Satellite TV company BSkyB, which is planning to launch around 200 digital TV channels from Astra in 1998, will also offer subscribers Internet access. Satellite receiver companies have developed hardware that can receive TV programmes, and data from the Internet. Eutelsat has also developed a DVB standard data delivery service. Full interactivity via satellite is expected by the year 2000, with the introduction of Ka-band satellites, allowing you to transmit high bandwidth back to the satellite via your dish. An example of planned services is Teledesic, another of Bill Gates' ambitious plans. This plans nearly 300 satellites using actively steered beam aerials to maintain 20000 supercells across the Earth. Within each, nine subcells provide ATM links of between 16 kbps and 2 Mbps. As well as the links to terrestrial data networks, a complex Internet-like web of connections will be maintained by the satellites between themselves. The whole network should be capable of supporting two million 16 kbps links-or fewer high-speed connections pro rata-and should be largely self-configuring.