From launch to transmission: satellite communication theory and SNG 97 near-instantaneous basis, so that gaps in speech between words are freed up to be used by other chan- nels. The multiplexer efficiently allocates the bandwidth of the link by detecting silence periods in the speech and suppressing the sending of speech information at these times to preserve bandwidth. It is usual to include the IP connection in this `bandwidth pool', and because is a classed as a `non-real-time' application, it has does not have priority over voice traffic. For instance, if the IP traffic were given equal or higher priority than voice traffic, one could end up with the audio channels being chopped by bursts of IP data, resulting in breaks in the audio. The brain is very sensitive to this, so voice traffic always has the highest priority. Channels on the statistical multiplexer can be programmed with different priorities, and it is also common to be able to reconfigure one end from the other if necessary. The use of an integrated communications system with the uplink is highly advantageous from both a cost and convenience point of view, as the bandwidth and power requirements of the comms carriers on the transponder are much lower than for the main program channel. Hence, satellite operators, even on ad hoc occasional capacity, will typically make only a modest charge for the use of this bandwidth; often the comms carriers can be squeezed between main program channel `guard-bands', with no noticeable degrada- tion to either signal. There is further discussion of the studio­remote communications system in Chapter 3. 2.12 The satellite We will briefly look at the processes on board the satellite itself. The satellite has a receive antenna and,