Where does satellite come into Asia’s 5G picture? Lluc Palerm-Serra, Senior Analyst at Northern Sky Research (NSR), says that satellites might play a bigger role in 5G in general than they have played in previous generations of mobile networks.
“At least in the near to mid-term future, $30 billion per year is not even the total market demand,” Sachdeva said via email.
Backhaul is poised to be a key driver for satellite industry growth. The combination of advanced ground segment technology and competitive capacity pricing makes satellite a compelling solution for MNOs to expand coverage.
“The terminals that the end-users will use to connect are a tremendous barrier as they are very expensive,” says Lluc Palerm-Serra, Senior Analyst at NSR. “Launching a global service is very tough. No [internet service provider] has done that before as they always have a [single] country focus.”
The last few years have seen increasing interest in space-based optical communications, driven by the convergence of multiple trends: rising small satellite data volumes, increasing security concerns and Radio Frequency (RF) spectrum congestion, to name a few.