Satellite Markets and Research Editor-in-Chief Virgil Labrador spoke with Lou Dubin, Senior Vice-President of Product Management of Comtech EF Data. Lou joined Comtech EF Data in 2008, through the acquisition of Radyne Corporation. During his tenure at Radyne Corporation, he held the positions of President of Radyne’s Phoenix, Arizona division and Vice President of Sales.
He has over 30 years of experience in the telecommunications and transmission industry. He holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from the Florida Institute of Technology and completed the Stanford Executive program in Technology Management. Lou shares his insights on their company and products and his views on the key trends in the satellite ground segment market.
First of all, give us an update on Comtech EF Data on your how do you see your company’s current position in the market?
First, thank you for the opportunity to discuss Comtech’s business, Virgil. Comtech EF Data is in a strong and highly diversified position within the satellite community. Our business and products cover a wide range of customers, verticals and product solutions. We service government, MNO, mobility and enterprise verticals, and our customers are satellite operators, service providers and end users. For these reasons, a strong downturn in markets such as aero or cruise really do not have significant impact on our overall business.
We are also very excited about our merger with UHP Networks. UHP has a track record of strong growth, highly satisfied returning customers and a quality to price point that is unmatched. The UHP story is highly synergistic. They bring to the table a high volume, quality VSAT product that can reach great scale and compliment our high performance VSAT networking solutions at very competitive price points.
There’s been a lot of changes in the industry in the past year since the global pandemic hit, how has it change your company or your company’s focus going forward?
As mentioned, our business is very balanced. Because of this balance, our overall sales have done well and we are weathering the storm. Other industries such as automotive and consumer electronics had pulled back their manufacturing during the pandemic, but demand didn’t drop for their products. These industries are trying to catch up to the demand and their products use many of the same chips and components that satellite equipment manufacturers use. Our focus currently needs to be keeping our eyes on potential supply chain issues.
What products or services will you be highlighting this year?
Comtech has continued to lead the market in technologies and products that service the most demanding needs in terms of Quality of Service, Quality of Experience, satellite efficiency and security. We have introduced new products such as our HX load balancer, 3rd generation dynamic roaming technology and our smallest and most capable government outdoor CyberLynx™ software defined modem, the SLM-5650C.
The HX load balancer, can seamlessly balance satellite traffic between transponders, satellites, satellite constellations and wireless and wired infrastructure. It can dynamically detect congestion or link outages and gracefully move traffic from one resource to another without dropping or re-ordering packets.
Our 3rd generation dynamic roaming technology has been released on our Heights™ Networking Platform and provides a new level of asset management to our mobility users. When an asset moves satellites or beams in our Heights platform, that asset can move its Quality of Service attributes with it to the new service zone, scale its attributes up or down depending on the new zone’s capacity or download completely new attributes assigned by the new zone. This gives our mobility customers a wide range of solution sets for mobile operations.
Our latest government modem, the SLM-5060C is roughly the size of a small tablet yet offers the widest possible range of U.S. Government and commercial standards in a single package. Commercial waveforms such as Sequential, TPC, LDPC, DVB-S2/S2X, government waveforms OM73, STANAG 4486, MIL-STD-188-165A/B and protected waveforms such as DSSS and DSSS-MA are software selectable. The SLM-5650C also offers NIST certified encryption for user data and control interfaces.
How do you see the market going forward for your products and services? What key trends and opportunities do you see?
Large scale constellations and the rapid development and deployment of smallsat and microsat satellites are driving real opportunities. The scale of some of the larger constellations and the sheer volume of equipment needed to service these constellations will drive efficiencies in manufacturing, spread engineering development across large volume sales and drive innovation in terms of orchestration and business continuity between space segment, ground segment and IT / back office software and infrastructure. Smallsats are driving new ways of thinking about satellite communication and Internet of Things (IoT). They are pushing the boundaries of what satellites can address and markets that are addressable by space.
Anything else you would like to add?
The past year has been difficult for everyone in some way or another, but for the satellite community, it really is hard to imagine a time where more change and opportunity have been seen. Our industry is transforming on a non-linear scale and unlikely to slow anytime soon.
Listen to an audio pocast with Lou Dubin at: www.satellitemarkets.com/dubin-podcast
