TECH TALK
It will be interesting to see how the satellite constellations such as Lynk and Iridium (with their direct to a handset approach, one being proprietary and the other a dedicated phone) will compete with SpaceX, OneWeb, Telesat and those who need a user terminal with an antenna to track a satellite for a connection.
FINALLY The one certain thing is that this emerging battle will take many twists and turns. There will be mergers, lawsuits, hostile takeovers, national pride will be hurt, and perhaps a few collisions (perhaps some of these accidental events will not be so accidental…? Especially if you have national champions of countries which are falling behind in this space war needing to make a ‘statement’). The rollout of the 5G cellular
standard will have an impact on the economics of the satellite operators since each of them will either compete with or supply or both to the mobile providers and the cable companies. Cellular and cell tower companies need to add many more 5G-compatible towers (well, towers that have 5G antennas) to handle the upcoming wave of traffic which is expected from this. 5G depends upon shorter distances between towers than 4G, so, it remains to be seen how satellite broadband (which includes voice) could co-exist more readily here, or provide consumers with an cost-effective alternative. Another key issue is that most of
the world does not even have 4G connectivity today, let alone the new 5G, so satellites could fill the gaps in emerging regions and rural areas even more so. This new demand needs to be backhauled off of remote cell towers to a network, which is where more satellite bandwidth will be required. The burgeoning demand for broadband internet connectivity is apparently maxing out today’s existing satellites.
30
DOMmagazine.com | nov 2019 Prices for bandwidth are
dropping, and you can expect that investors are watching revenue and budget projections very carefully as this market evolves. Legacy communications satellites with 15 year or more lifespans may become extinct due to the quickly changing nature of new communications capabilities, and this will have a similar effect on video broadcasting. It makes you wonder how GPS and the other navigation satellite constellations will be able to keep up in time, since their more focused applications may be handled quicker, better and cheaper with a mega constellation. With an updated set of follow-on functions to ADS- B/C and related aircraft operations needs, applications such as passenger- carrying drones or emergency/ disaster-relief drones (ferrying supplies to needed locations where no communications may be available) will be enabled. The newer smaller satellites from the mega constellions in LEO orbit will have reported lifespans of five to seven years, with planned obsolensence, with updated satellites being planned in as technology quickly evolves. Expect that the ever- growing use of specialized sensors (the Internet-of-Things, IoT) to generate new bandwidth needs as the world keeps installing more sensors on more items, which need to report status or events, and this will drive the need for more bandwidth and for satellites to perhaps handle some new functionality over time. The high-speed financial trading industry alone could use a satellite constellation, since trades over terrestrial cable links may eventually happen slower over more considerable distances than they would over newer satellite links, thus creating the need for secured dedicated communications satellites on their own (e.g., Wall Street One,
NASDAQ SkyLink – note to self, trademark these names…) since every millisecond means lost profit. Today there are transoceanic and fiber on land dedicated cables to just handle the financial industry, as well as dedicated microwave networks, which will undoubtedly continue to the primary use for sending orders, but the newer satellite links may open new markets for high-speed trading once technology brings down satellite latency times further. The new satellite constellations will
drive new applications and ideas with the reduced cost capabilities they will offer, and this will change the economics of many industries around the world.
This big game of real-life Risk is
just starting up. This should be fun. NOTE TO READERS: As this
article was being written, I had to change several of the sections due to timely news releases by some of these companies. By the time this article is published, some of the facts here may change, so please do some research if you are using this data in any pertinent way).
John Pawlicki is CEO and principal of OPM Research. He also works with Information Tool Designers (ITD), where he consults to
the DOT’s Volpe Center, handling various technology and cyber security projects for the FAA and DHS. He managed and deployed various products over the years, including the launch of CertiPath (with world’s first commercial PKI bridge). John has also been onic FAA 8130-3 forms, as well as in defining digital identities with PKI. His recent publication, ‘Aerospace Marketplaces Report,’ which analyzed third-party sites that support the trading of aircraft parts, is available on
OPMResearch.com as a PDF download, or a printed book version is available on
Amazon.com.
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