{"id":51585,"date":"2024-03-27T00:51:34","date_gmt":"2024-03-26T16:51:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/satellite-business-gets-marriage-advice-on-relationship-with-telco-partners\/"},"modified":"2024-03-27T00:51:34","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T16:51:34","slug":"satellite-business-gets-marriage-advice-on-relationship-with-telco-partners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/satellite-business-gets-marriage-advice-on-relationship-with-telco-partners\/","title":{"rendered":"Satellite Business Gets \u2018Marriage Advice\u2019 on Relationship With Telco Partners"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

The relationship between satellite operators and telcos can at times seem like a troubled marriage \u2014 \u201cIt is difficult to live together. But it\u2019s more difficult to live alone,\u201d Jean-Luc Vuillemin, special executive advisor to the CEO of mobile network operator Orange<\/strong>, told a session at last week\u2019s SATELLITE 2024.<\/p>\n

Leaders representing Orange, Telstra<\/strong>, and Space Compass<\/strong> offered a variety of marriage advice from terrestrial network operators and new hybrid telcos to satellite providers, while echoing Vuillemin\u2019s commitment to stick with the relationship.<\/p>\n

Satellite connectivity is \u201cexistentially important for us in Asia,\u201d said Paul Abfalter, head of North Asia & Global Wholesale at Australian MNO Telstra. Because Telstra serves markets like the remote rural areas of Australia and the Pacific Islands, which don\u2019t have fiber connections, satellite-provided cellular backhaul is sometimes the only way to get mobile connectivity, he said.<\/p>\n

The telco representatives take a realistic view of the developments in the satellite industry like Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites.<\/p>\n

While the satellite industry is excited about LEO, Vuillemin said, \u201cIf you want to have the best connectivity at the lowest possible cost, nothing is better than a big traditional GEO [Geostationary] satellite.\u201d<\/p>\n

The biggest problem in the marriage of satellite and telco partners Vuillemin suggested, is how fractured the satellite landscape is. \u201cSatellite is not an industry \u2014 it is a set of industries,\u201d he said, adding that it functions as if each operator is its own industry and they don\u2019t know how to work with each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s exactly the same situation that mobile operators were in 60 years ago, when you had one program in each country and it was not possible to interoperate,\u201d he said. Vuillemin suggested some operators are \u201ccontinuing to use a lack of standards as a protection of their own business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Satellite operators \u201cdon\u2019t really understand the needs\u201d of their users, he added, explaining how different the Starlink customer experience was. \u201cI ordered it on the internet,\u201d he said. Three days later, the terminal arrived. He set it up in his garden and was on the internet five minutes later.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompare that with a traditional satellite provider,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Starlink terminals are priced much cheaper than traditional \u201cvery big, very proprietary, and very expensive\u201d terminals, said Shigehiro Hori, co-CEO of Space Compass.<\/p>\n

In the relationship between telcos and satellite providers, Space Compass is in a unique position. The company is a joint venture between Japan\u2019s largest terrestrial network operator NTT and national satellite provider Sky Perfect JSAT. Co-owned by its two parents, Space Compass is staffed by a joint team drawn from both companies, and represents a whole greater than the sum of its parts, explained Hori.<\/p>\n

JSAT \u201cunderstands the [satellite] technology, but they don\u2019t know much about the cell network businesses and vice versa. NTT doesn\u2019t know much about satellites,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As befits its lineage as the offspring of satellite and telco, Space Compass has a \u201cfuturistic vision, fusing terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks\u201d to provide seamless connectivity in hard-to-reach markets.<\/p>\n

Space Compass also plans to invest in high altitude platform stations, or HAPS, with plans to enter service in Japanese fiscal year 2025. HAPS function as a \u201ccell tower in the sky,\u201d said Hori, with a much greater reach than a terrestrial cell tower, and more bandwidth than a ground-based local station could offer.<\/p>\n

The company has signed a   in 2022 with Airbus HAPS, a subsidiary of the European aerospace giant which says it aims to provide services the Zephyr solar-powered aircraft. Space Compass is also at the center of a Japanese government effort to develop space-based direct-to-device capability via HAPS.<\/p>\n

The effort to develop direct-to-device capability underlines why satellite operators need telcos to go to market, said Abfalter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think telcos are needed a lot more than what they were 10 years ago. Just partly because the volume and reach needed now is so much bigger for those B2C use cases, and even for the B2B ones. Volume means telcos have become a much more important channel for the satellite industry than what they were 10 years ago,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In the past two years, Telstra\u2019s corporate customers have been demanding broadband connectivity \u201cin some weird and wonderful places.\u201d He said large multinational corporations are  \u201creally ahead of the game, wanting to see LEO use cases come in as quickly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both sides of the marriage need each other. While satellite operators need telcos for distribution, telcos need satellite to connect in places no one else can, said Abfalter. Most of the bid tenders coming from large multinational enterprises required global wireless connectivity that only satellite could guarantee.<\/p>\n

But telcos don\u2019t always feel the love in return, he said. \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ve necessarily felt like a marriage partner for most satellite providers \u2014 more like an ad hoc girlfriend that gets lots of urgent calls when there\u2019s a problem. It feels like that most of the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The relationship between satellite operators and telcos can at times seem like a troubled marriage \u2014 \u201cIt is difficult to live together. But it\u2019s more difficult to live alone,\u201d Jean-Luc Vuillemin, special executive advisor to the CEO of mobile network operator Orange, told a session at last week\u2019s SATELLITE 2024. Leaders representing Orange, Telstra, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51586,"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-51585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51585"}],"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=51585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}