Kathy Gibson at SatCom, Sandton – Around the world today, most people require connectivity – and satellite is one way that this can be accomplished.
What’s needed, says Martin Griffin, senior engineer: Space Service Department of the ITU, is to establish a national telecommunication satellite system.
Griffin was speaking at the SatCom 2014 conference, held today in Sandton.
Among the challenges facing the satellite market is that fact that it is reaching saturation in many bands – even the newer ka bands are filling up, he says.
As a result, the industry is looking for more efficient ways to pack more satellite services into existing systems.
On the positive front, he says, users are seeing liberalisation and deregulation of the market along with consolidation of operators and manufacturers. At the same time, new players are emerging.
Meanwhile, standards are moving to higher bit-rates, higher density and higher regulation modulation schemes, in an attempt to pack more data into less bandwidth.
“The satellite market has seen positive trends even during the recession,” Griffin says. “Third generation satellites are being deployed. And there is a move to integrate satellite with terrestrial mobile services.”
In looking to satellite connectivity, Griffin points out that there are two options available.
The first option is to lease capacity from an existing service provider – there are many available.
The second is to design, build and operate your own.
This will take about three years to design, build and place in orbit, but thereafter users will get about 15 years of use.
