Patent ID: 8909220

Claim:
A satellite communication system comprising: a plurality of satellites each having one or more beams, each beam having one or more channels and the one or more channels from each of the one or more beams from each satellite providing a global bandwidth pool; a global bandwidth enforcer that allocates bandwidth from the global bandwidth pool in accordance with a group service plan having a predetermined geographic scope; a first satellite access station that receives the one or more channels of the one or more beams from a first satellite included in the plurality of satellites, the first satellite access station receiving, from the global bandwidth enforcer, an allocation of bandwidth from the one or more channels of the one or more beams of the first satellite in accordance with the group service plan; a second satellite access station that receives the one or more channels of the one or more beams from a second satellite included in the plurality of satellites, the second satellite access station receiving, from the global bandwidth enforcer, an allocation of bandwidth from the one or more channels of the one or more beams of the second satellite in accordance with the group service plan; a first sub-network associated with the first satellite access station having a channel bandwidth manager controlling the bandwidth pool of the channel associated with the sub-network and the channel associated with a beam having a coverage area in the predetermined geographic scope of the group service plan, the first sub-network receiving an allocation of bandwidth from the first satellite access station in accordance with the group service plan, the first sub-network providing the allocated bandwidth to each user terminal service associated with the group service plan and located in the coverage area of the first sub-network; and a second sub-network associated with the first satellite access station has a coverage area in the predetermined geographic scope of the group service plan, wherein the first and second sub-networks associated with the first satellite access station each include a local configuration of QoS parameters in association with the group service plan, the first sub-network generates first and second terminal service demand vectors for a network service associated with first and second user terminals associated with the group service plan and located in the coverage area of the first sub-network, the first and second terminal service demand vectors each include a predetermined number of demand brackets, and bandwidth demand for the network service received from the first and second user terminals is linearly or exponentially proportioned among the predetermined number of demand brackets of the first and second terminal service demand vectors, respectively.