Satellite Industry Expects to Play Bigger Role in Media with Next-Generation Solution
NEW YORK -- The next generation of satellites will need to be more affordable and flexible and meet more sophisticated demands of the telecom service and broadcast industries, satellite and broadcast industry executives said Thursday at the SATCON conference. Next-generation satellites will be more affordable and flexible, said Joe Vanderpoorten, director of the Transformational Satellite Communications System Mission Operations Group of Military Satellite Communications Systems Wing. The pieces will cost less and they'll be smaller, he said. With smaller pieces, “I can build them often, I can launch them often,” and have more industry partners, he said. There’s a dimension of flexibility because mobility is needed, he said. “If you have pieces that are disaggregated, you can move them around."
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Media companies are looking for scalability, agility, flexibility and interactivity, said Rich Wolf, ABC telecom and affiliate services vice president. As the companies are looking to be more targeted in their delivery, “we need platforms that can be managed to deliver that targeted based content delivery,” he said. There are opportunities for satellite to evolve and provide those services “that really drive what the media companies of tomorrow are looking for,” he said.
Satellite companies are expected to offer a hybrid-based backbone that can deliver content in a highly efficient way that takes advantage of multiple spot beams and high orders of frequency re-use, Wolf said. “In a perfect world, we'd care little about the band,” he said. “We'd focus on what the application is and how the platform needs to provide the quality of service to deliver it.” If the fabric of multiple bands and beams can be knitted together and managed, there’s a pretty compelling case, he said. Hybrid models are emerging in the satellite industry, said Arnold Friedman, marketing senior vice president at Space Systems/Loral. Sirius XM is satellite and terrestrially based, and DirecTV and EchoStar are “blurring the distinction between satellite company and terrestrial company,” he said. The demand for Ka band is increasing, he said. Ka band is in the process of rolling out, “and as the performance of satellites improves, it allows it to be a more integral and reliable part of the overall network,” he said.
Vivisat is building next-generation satellites called mission extension vehicles (MEV), said Chief Operating Officer Bryan McGuirk. The MEVs will dock with satellites to provide them with an extension of one to 10 years, he said. There’s demand for new solutions that can deal with the majority of satellites with all the subsystems working, he said.
Satellite companies can act as a cloud for media companies, Wolf said. “They have tremendous ground-based infrastructure,” and great power systems and great capabilities of resilience in their backbone, he said. “We'll see more and more integration.” Telecom service providers are looking to the satellite industry to supplement and complement their networks, said Sergy Mummert, SES Americas business development senior vice president. They want customers to have a consistent experience in the home and outside of it, he said. The next generation of satellites must be designed to meet that need, he added.
The government also is in need of affordability, said Friedman. The government has always had exquisite systems and commercial systems, he said. Now it’s “looking for something in between that,” he said. It wants something affordable “that gives them more measures of protection and meets some of their unique government needs,” he said.