NSR’s Satellite Industry Financial Analysis, 10th Edition report, released today, finds an industry enduring stunted growth with bankruptcies and revenue declines across the satellite operator and service provider segments.
Since then, cloud players have emerged as a key segment to watch out for in the satellite business, first through direct peering partnerships such as Azure ExpressRoute and IBM Direct Link, and more recently, through high profile dedicated business units as in the case of AWS Aerospace and Satellite Solutions and Azure Space.
Non-GEOs continue to make noise, and for the right reasons. With SpaceX launching hundreds of satellites and revealing more info on their user antennas (with Musk admitting that the biggest challenge is cost of user terminals) to OneWeb restarting their production and awaiting a 36-satellite December launch, to Telesat forming a new public company post.
The Starlink constellation is currently made up of over 650 communication satellites orbiting Earth at an altitude of 550 kilometers. By satellite count, such partial deployment already makes SpaceX the world’s largest satellite operator of FSS frequency bands suitable for high-throughput connectivity. As more Starlink and OneWeb satellites are manufactured, deployed and other satellite operators.
Does this mean the line between a retail and wholesale player is fading with upstream players competing with their own customers? Is this the right strategy for the Fixed VSAT ecosystem?