{"id":47212,"date":"2026-04-10T01:51:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T17:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/live-in-the-booth-sky-perfect-jsat-president-ceo-eiichi-yonekuralive-in-the-booth-matt-desch-talks-iridium-ntn-direct-and-alt-pnt-advances\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T01:51:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T17:51:08","slug":"live-in-the-booth-sky-perfect-jsat-president-ceo-eiichi-yonekuralive-in-the-booth-matt-desch-talks-iridium-ntn-direct-and-alt-pnt-advances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/live-in-the-booth-sky-perfect-jsat-president-ceo-eiichi-yonekuralive-in-the-booth-matt-desch-talks-iridium-ntn-direct-and-alt-pnt-advances\/","title":{"rendered":"Live in the Booth: Sky Perfect JSAT President &#038; CEO Eiichi Yonekura,Live in the Booth: Matt Desch Talks Iridium NTN Direct and Alt PNT Advances"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Sky Perfect JSAT<\/strong>, one of the biggest global operators, is banking on a multi-faceted approach to grow its business over the next few years. SKY Perfect JSAT President &amp; CEO Eiichi Yonekura spoke with <em>Via Satellite<\/em> Editors Rachel Jewett and Mark Holmes for a \u201cLive in the Booth\u201d interview during SATShow Week.<\/p>\n<p>The company\u2019s move further into the Earth Observation (EO) arena is an example of this. Sky Perfect JSAT has decided its best approach is to own EO satellite assets and move beyond being just a distribution partner to customers, with last year\u2019s order of a satellite constellation from Planet. Yonekura hailed the move and called it a \u201cbig step,\u201d saying that by having direct access to customers, it can play a critical role, particularly in government and mission critical use cases.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is important as [it] means we have made the evolution from a communications provider to a space-based data and solutions company,\u201d said Yonekura.<\/p>\n<p>Yonekura also spoke about the importance of Sky Perfect JSAT investing in the Japanese ecosystem and startups. The company will be investing 10 billion Japanese yen ($63 million) into startups. However, Yonekura was keen to point out that this goal of this was less monetary, and more finding future partners.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur purpose here isn\u2019t really capital gains. We want to find companies we can work with and use their technology and products (in the future). Space is a business market now, not just an academic pursuit. We have invested in several startup companies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p><em>Via Satellite editors Rachel Jewett and Mark Holmes interviewed Yonekura as part of the \u201cLive in the Booth\u201d series during SATShow Week on March 24.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>,<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Live in the Booth with Iridium CEO Matthew Desch\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WdhEXz2zc2k?feature=oembed&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https:\/\/www.satellitetoday.com\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-gtm-yt-inspected-13602404_75=\"true\" id=\"359030487\" data-gtm-yt-inspected-12=\"true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This year, <b>Iridium <\/b>is rolling out Iridium NTN Direct, which CEO Matt Desch says will make Iridium the first narrow-band satellite IoT service that is standardized and global. Iridium was able to deploy this standards-based service on its existing satellite network.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Joining <em>Via Satellite<\/em> for a \u201cLive in the Booth\u201d interview, Desch said he sees opportunity for Iridium NTN Direct in the automotive industry, which has been hesitant to adopt proprietary technologies.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re now talking to automotive companies around the world for narrow-band applications like airbag deployment or software downloads or emergency location services. They may have other technologies over time, but cell phones don\u2019t cover everything in the world. We would be a low-cost [service],\u201d Desch said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>He also gives his thoughts on the outlook on the direct-to-device (D2D) market and why he\u2019s a pragmatist who won\u2019t \u201chype\u201d the value of Iridium\u2019s spectrum. Desch also talks about advances in Iridium PNT, an alternative PNT service, and sizes up the recent pace of change in the satellite industry.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Via Satellite<\/em> editors Rachel Jewett and Mark Holmes interviewed Desch as part of the \u201cLive in the Booth\u201d series during SATShow Week on March 25. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sky Perfect JSAT, one of the biggest global operators, is banking on a multi-faceted approach to grow its business over the next few years. SKY Perfect JSAT President &amp; CEO Eiichi Yonekura spoke with Via Satellite Editors Rachel Jewett and Mark Holmes for a \u201cLive in the Booth\u201d interview during SATShow Week. The company\u2019s move [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47212"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}