{"id":80022,"date":"2013-09-18T22:33:22","date_gmt":"2013-09-18T14:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/hts-in-latin-america-a-fluid-situation\/"},"modified":"2013-09-18T22:33:22","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T14:33:22","slug":"hts-in-latin-america-a-fluid-situation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/hts-in-latin-america-a-fluid-situation\/","title":{"rendered":"HTS in Latin America: A Fluid Situation"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

High Throughput Satellites (HTS) remain a hot topic of conversation in the industry, but their impact outside of North America is harder to examine. In Latin America, a vibrant region for satellite communications, we assess what impact HTS could have.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In May, Hispasat announced the start of service of Amazonas 3, a $300 million, high-powered Brazilian satellite, operated and managed by Hispamar, a subsidiary for Hispasat in Brazil. According to Hispasat, virtually the whole capacity of the satellite has been bought during its first three months in orbit, a phase of technical adjustments, since its launch in February. Three of the nine beams will serve demand for capacity in places such as S\u00e3o Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Bras\u00edlia. Other beams will serve demand in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Bogot\u00e1, Lima and Santiago.<\/p>\n

Hispasat has been one of the first major operators to place a bet for HTS in the region. \u201cWe see a big demand for residential satellite broadband services in the region, despite the efforts of the main telecoms operators to deploy other technologies such as fiber and 4G,\u201d says Ignacio Sanchis, chief commercial officer, Hispasat. \u201cThe nature of the Latin American market will mean there will be huge parts of populations that will not be able to connect using terrestrial technologies. Therefore, we see a big demand for residential broadband. But, we also believe Ka-band can help us provide broadband services to corporations. Our forecast is really positive. That is why have committed to the Amazonas 4B, which we will launch in 2015. This will be a full Ka-band satellite reaching some of the major markets in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n

A strong demand for residential broadband could fuel these services. \u201cOur research showed that in Brazil and Mexico there is a potential demand of millions of households for residential satellite broadband services. When you combine the expected pace of deployment of other terrestrial broadband networks with the expected increase of many population groups that today cannot afford these services but will in the coming years, the result is that millions of households are potentially customers. We see a strong demand over the next decade,\u201d Sanchis adds.<\/p>\n

However, others are not so sure what impact HTS will have in the residential broadband market. Mauricio Segovia, president of Axesat, a key service provider in the region, doubts its success, mainly because of the price point associated with HTS. \u201cIf you want to charge $60 for a broadband connection, there is not a lot of people outside the big cities that can pay for this, particularly in countries like Colombia,\u201d he says. \u201cOnce you go into the big cities, where people can afford to pay, you are then competing with telcos, so it becomes that much harder. It will be hard to compete; I am not sure what the residential play will be. I think the price points will be too high outside of the cities. It will take a lot of work to get those high throughput beams filled up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cellular Backhaul<\/strong>
\nIn Latin America, most countries are right in the middle of the transition to the latest generations of mobile technology. According to Carmen Gonz\u00e1lez-Sanfeliu, Intelsat\u2019s regional vice president for Latin America & Caribbean, cellular backhaul is also another market to watch. She says \u201cmajor opportunities\u201d for HTS will be found in this sector due to the evolution from 2G to 3G to 4G\/LTE.<\/p>\n

Carlos Placido, analyst, NSR is also optimistic about HTS\u2019 role here. \u201cThe lower revenue per transport bit of an increasingly data-driven cellular environment is challenging the economics of traditional FSS backhaul but HTS capacity (both GEO and MEO) will come to the rescue of the satellite-based cellular backhaul business model and better enable 3G\/4G backhaul as well as new ways for leveraging HTS capacity on-demand,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Economics<\/strong>
\nThe economic crisis in Europe is also a strong driver for investors to search for new markets, and Latin America remains an attractive bet. Hispasat has shifted its focus from Europe to Latin America and has almost 60 percent of its business in the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnlike the experiences in the United States and Europe, demand for high throughput satellite capacity in Latin America could be rather driven by a mix of consumer-class and enterprise-class services but with a stronger enterprise play,\u201d Placido says. \u201cThere are strong roots for enterprise VSAT services in the region which will gradually migrate towards HTS services as capacity becomes available.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rob Kilroy, vice-president of sales in Americas for iDirect, and Gonz\u00e1lez-Sanfeliu agree that besides DTH and cellular backhaul, enterprise services are also a strong driver to HTS in Latin America. According to them, the market is growing fast in this area as well. Other drivers are mobility needs in mining, oil and gas market, but not restricted to that. \u201cThere are also strong opportunities in maritime, energy, mining, hospitality, retail, health care and manufacturing \u2013 with double digital growth rates expected,\u201d says Kilroy. \u201cThis demand will be aided by government-funded projects throughout the region aimed at bridging the digital divide, a loosening of foreign direct investment regulations and telecom industry deregulation.\u201d He says other countries are also prone to go to the same direction, opening opportunities for companies to capitalize on the extensive need for satellite coverage to support the increased demand in several areas. \u201cI also see the need for increased coverage happening in most other LatAm countries as they expand their economic growth and drive the need for increased communications both at the government, private enterprise and consumer level,\u201d Kilroy says.<\/p>\n

Transition and Oversupply<\/strong>
\nAlthough the trend is clear, it is still uncertain how fast and how much impact will HTS have on overall communications infrastructure, simply because it is still an emerging market \u2013 not only in Brazil, but also in other big markets, such as Mexico, Colombia and Argentina. Kilroy believes that not all demand is for HTS. \u201cThere is certainly an increased demand for additional satellite capacity throughout all of Latin America but not necessarily all for HTS,\u201d he says. \u201cSeveral of the countries are already quite far down the road to having new satellites built for them or have already just launched new satellites. However, this is on top of new capacity coming or planning on coming into Latin America from Satmex, Intelsat and Telesat to name a few.\u201d<\/p>\n

Placido is also skeptical about a big HTS deployment completely disrupting the market. \u201cSo far the approach has been rather evolutionary: Hispasat\u00b4s Ka-band payload on the Amazonas 3 and Intelsat\u00b4s plans for EpicNG in the region suggest that operators may tend to granularly match supply and demand. O3b is also targeting the need for high-speed trunking and backhaul access,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

In the past, Latin America went through a scenario of oversupply. \u201cYou can never discard a scenario of oversupply if an \u2018HTS land grabbing scenario\u2019 unfolds,\u201d says Placido. \u201cThe downside of a gradual approach for established leading operators such as Intelsat, StarOne and SES is that HTS capacity supply could be spread across a number of satellites and operators.\u201d<\/p>\n

While a concern, Kilroy says it doesn\u2019t seem much of a worry, due to abundance of current capacity contracts and strong market growth projections. He also points out that operators are being more cautious and looking forward to selling capacity before launching new satellites, which diminishes the possibilities of oversupplying the market. \u201cAdditionally the new capacity is now being introduced on a \u2018can we sell this satellite out before we position it\u2019 model which tends to alleviate the concern of too much capacity. Other new satellites are being introduced by governments, which will tend to be more of a closed offering to government and military departments. With newer applications driving the demand for more bandwidth along with stronger Latin American economies, the need to share more and more data is a key driver to requiring more coverage,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Intelsat does not see this as an issue. \u201cThe state of the satellite industry in Brazil, and all of Latin America, right now is strong,\u201d says Gonz\u00e1lez-Sanfeliu. \u201cLatin America remains one of the fastest-growing regions for Intelsat worldwide. As the region continues to post economic gains, demand for satellite communications will be robust. Media services continue to drive growth in Latin America.\u201d VS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

High Throughput Satellites (HTS) remain a hot topic of conversation in the industry, but their impact outside of North America is harder to examine. In Latin America, a vibrant region for satellite communications, we assess what impact HTS could have. In May, Hispasat announced the start of service of Amazonas 3, a $300 million, high-powered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":80023,"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-80022","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\/80022"}],"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=80022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}