As I began writing this column news was filtering over media about the decision of the World Health Organization to designate the latest mutations to the spike protein of the Sars-Cov-2 virus as a “variant of concern”, and to use the Greek letter Omicron to name it (rather than the original designation of B.1.1.529). Thanks to the skills of scientists at South Africa’s Medical Research Council Genomics Centre the exact sequencing of the new variant was speedily completed and its details promulgated quickly to their colleagues in sister agencies around the world.
News of cases of infection with Omicron was already headlining to include instances way beyond southern Africa; in Israel, Hong Kong, and Belgium. The next day, the UK notified its first two cases. Over following days cases were reported elsewhere around the world.
This news, to a certain extent, colors my contribution this month. Habitual at this time of year is the practice of appraising the events of the last 12-months. This is partly as precursor to embracing our expectations for the prospect of events in the coming year, both in general terms and in terms of events within, and impacting, the satellite industry. This tendency is understandably strengthened by a year of pandemic circumstances which have exacerbated our reliance on connectivity.
Against this general backdrop – and as we move towards and into the 5G era, acknowledging (as will the 3GPP Release 17 document due for publication in the first quarter of 2022) that the near-future “network of networks” is the highly significant opportunity that the world has to completely leverage the advantages to be derived from additional use cases for satellite communications – the GVF webinar of December 1st investigates the nature of industry stakeholder dialogues on the current state of the satellite communications industry and its user markets in respect of a swath of interconnected trends engendering transformational changes in the industry, changes that are additionally serving to catapult satellite into a more central position in our everyday lives.
‘Satellite Industry Trends: A Year to Remember, A Year Ahead’ (https://gvf.org/webinar/satellite-industry-trends-a-year-to-remember-a-year-ahead/), moderated by Stéphane Chenard of Euroconsult, assembles a panel of industry experts from across antenna technologies; communications and IT service provision; modem/network management systems/infrastructure technologies; and NGSO constellation operations. Providing penetrating analysis and insight, along with the complemetary perspectives of orbital and ground segment, the webinar features, from Kymeta, David Fotheringham, Director Product Management; from Speedcast, Will Mudge, Vice President, Engineering Operations; from ST Engineering iDirect, Jo De Loor, Vice President, Market Development & Strategy; and from OneWeb, Chris McLaughlin, Chief of Government, Regulatory & Engagement.
From a ‘big picture’ perspective the webinar looks at the justification, across both space and ground segments, for describing 2021 as “transformational”, defining the trends setting it apart from previous years and those being primarily responsible for propelling the satellite industry into that more central position in our everyday lives.
To begin with each panelist is asked to briefly discuss their top event of 2021, and expected/predicted top event for 2022.
COP-26 – the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2021 – celebrated as something of a success by some, condemned as a failure by others, including many of the developing nations likely to be most severely impacted by climate change, has nevertheless positioned global warming as impossible to ignore or dismiss; positioning it as the background to everyday operations for at least some of the satellite industry’s user market verticals. This webinar asks where satellite communications fits into this “Problem #1” for current and future generations. Our industry does, of course, have its own ecosystem/environment concerns, and this dialogue asks if 2021 will be remembered as the year when space debris was finally taken seriously.
The discussion also looks at the impact of transformational change to the business context of space, both strategically for the entire sector and at the scale of the individual company, both corporates and start-ups. Various business trends – variously precipitated by the dynamics of the pandemic (of which the Omicron variant is the latest development) on national and global economics – are of significance, for example, changes in interest rates affecting industry consolidations, increasing commodity prices, and supply-chain problems, particularly with semiconductors.
It is clear that recent years have witnessed some significant trends in vertical integration in the satellite industry. More recently we have seen innovative investment relationships within and across industry segments, such as investments in OneWeb by Hughes and Eutelsat. Very recently, a major acquisition was announced with the Viasat-Inmarsat deal. Against this backdrop the webinar panelists are asked to reflect on trends that seem to include a new mega-constellation project announcement every week, asking “Should we be excited? Should we care? Should we worry?”
The advent of the mega-constellation has, of course, been built upon remarkable advances in R&D, as well as in manufacturing innovation. The panel considers whether anything that was technically beyond the state-of-the-art a year ago became possible during 2021, and enquires as to what they anticipate for imminent breakthroughs in 2022.
Going into 2022 brings us closer to WRC-23, when the member nations of the ITU are scheduled to gather once again to decide how the physical world’s limited spectrum resources are allocated. The panel of ‘Satellite Industry Trends: A Year to Remember, A Year Ahead’ is asked their views as to whether they think there were any remarkable regulatory developments in 2021, and any awaited in 2022.
Any discussion of spectrum issues inevitably leads us back to the subject of the 5G era and the panel members provide their appraisal of how much it had matured in 2021. As noted above, with 3GPP Release 17 expected in early 2022, the key question to be answered had to be “What will it change?”
If you didn’t get the chance to join the webinar audience “live” you haven’t entirely missed out. You can catch-up with GVF’s on-demand recording of the event, sponsored by Kymeta, through our website at https://gvf.org/webinar/satellite-industry-trends-a-year-to-remember-a-year-ahead/. Until 2022, stay safe!
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Martin Jarrold is Vice-President of International Program Development of GVF. He can be reached at: martin.jarold@gvf.org
