This is where I work.  The full name of the facility is the San Francisco International Gateway.  The whole name wouldn't fit in the title up above.  After all, it is a mouthful!  Actually, the facility is not located in San Francisco, but rather in Richmond, California.  We are due East of the Golden Gate Bridge on the eastern coast of the San Francisco Bay.   You can see the Golden Gate Bridge in the background in the photo below.

This facility is a Satellite Teleport.  We transmit and receive video and data signals from various satellites in geosynchronous orbit around the earth.  A satellite in geosynchronous orbit is at an altitude such that it rotates around the earth at the same speed that the earth rotates.  As a result, it appears to remain stationary in the sky.  Because of this, complicated tracking antennas aren't needed to send and receive signals from these satellites.  Much simpler stationary antennas will work.

A satellite is really just a relay station in the sky.  It can be used as a point to point medium to send a single circuit between the East and West coasts of the U.S., or as a point to multi-point medium to send a single signal to a multitude of locations.  

A good example of point to multi-point is one of our clients, techtv, the 24 hour computer channel from Ziff-Davis.  They have their studios in San Francisco.  They send their video programming to us on a fiber-optic cable leased from Pacific Bell, and we transmit the programming to one of the satellites, in this case Satcom C4.  Cable systems around the U.S. (and possibly Canada and Mexico as well) have antennas (dishes) aimed at Satcom C4 and they receive the programming so that they can include it in their channel lineup.

An official description of what I do is Satellite Earth Station Systems Design Engineer.  I put together the components and design the interfaces necessary to complete the satellite uplink services which we provide.  The job includes a lot of math and I use AutoCAD 3D (a computer drafting/modeling program) extensively.

This facility was originally founded as Spectrum Satellite, Inc. in 1989 by Steve Moreen and myself.  In August, 1998 Spectrum Satellite was sold to Loral Skynet, a division of Loral Spacecom Corporation.  In March of 2006 Loral Skynet sold the teleport to ABS-CBN International.