![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.satellitetoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/FZz9iySXRYeep99k82GX_01_VS_040115_Cover_DGTL_p01-300x162.jpg\")
\t\t\t<\/p>\nBack in the late 1990s, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites were thought to represent the future of the industry, and vast amounts of press attention were lavished on small LEOs, big LEOs and broadband LEOs. In some ways this was hardly surprising because of the huge amounts of money involved: $5 billion was spent on Iridium, almost as much on Globalstar, and Teledesic was expected to cost at least $10 billion. However, in the end these projects proved to be a sideshow from the key development in satellite technology during the latter part of the decade: the increases in satellite power and lifetime, which enabled traditional Ku-band transponders to be built and launched for roughly half the cost (in dollars per year of life) from just a few years earlier. As a result, when growth expectations changed after the bursting of the dotcom bubble, from 2001 to 2004 the satellite market experienced a significant downturn, not due to the failure of Iridium and Globalstar and the demise of Teledesic (which had almost no impact, apart from on investor sentiment), but because of overcapacity and dramatic price erosion within the core Fixed Satellite Services (FSS) transponder leasing business.<\/p>\n
Now we are faced with much the same situation as OneWeb and SpaceX compete for attention with their proposals for massive LEO broadband constellations, while the industry (and press) tries hard to ignore the elephant in the room, namely the dramatic increases in capacity available from high throughput Geostationary (GEO) satellites. In just a few short years, we\u2019ve gone from satellites with capacities measured in the Gigabits per second, to tens and now hundreds of Gigabits per second. More importantly, these higher capacity satellites are not just being devoted to consumer satellite broadband, like ViaSat 1 and Jupiter 1, but with Intelsat\u2019s Epic program, and copycat spot beam satellites from SES, Telesat and others, High Throughput Satellites (HTS) are moving into more mainstream FSS markets, such as maritime and aeronautical services and business VSAT networks. We\u2019re also seeing substantial price erosion, with Global Eagle recently declaring, after striking a deal to move its In-Flight Connectivity (IFC) services over to SES\u2019s satellites, that it had obtained new, far more attractive lease rates with price cuts that were \u201cnot \u2026 in the 10 percent range or even the 25 percent range, significantly lower.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.<\/p>\n
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