Satcom Integration Into Terrestrial Telecom Networks a Long, Complex Road
Satellite communications companies see a big opportunity in tying into terrestrial telecom networks but face big hurdles like ground network equipment that may not be up to the task, industry executives and watchers said Thursday in a Northern Sky Research webinar.
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Satcom has a long way to go to be a notable presence in terrestrial telecom networks, said NSR CEO Christopher Baugh, pointing to it having roughly a 1% participation in the $1.6 trillion spent globally annually on telecom services. A key challenge is that while terrestrial telecom networks are a homogeneous, scalable ecosystem with largely software-defined products and services, satcom is comprised of heterogeneous, differentiated networks that are hardware centric, Baugh said. Historically, satcom networks haven't liked to talk to one another, he said. However, low earth orbit mega-cancellations are sparking renewed interest by telecom carriers in satcom, he said.
The hardware-centric satellite ecosystem has been slow to adopt capabilities that are found in terrestrial telco networks, said Scott Mumford, CEO of African telco Liquid Telecom. He said the development cycle for getting new features out to market remains long, though there has been move toward adoption of standards that would let development happen more quickly.
Adopting some systems and methods used in the telco world, as well as integrating telco industry standards into satcom networks will help overcome those challenges, said Carmel Ortiz, Intelsat vice president-systems innovation.
Ground-segment equipment manufacturers are lagging behind the rapid capability development happening on the spacecraft side, said Mumford. Satellite tech development "is in the middle of a quantum leap," he said, pointing to moves by Intelsat, SES and Eutelsat toward software-defined fleets with beam-forming capabilities. Ground segments and infrastructure "are a couple years behind," he said. Current generations of infrastructure will be hard-pressed to provide the level of services and flexibility that satellites can, he said.
Integrating today's satcom ground infrastructure with terrestrial telco networks will be done only "with a great deal of difficulty," Mumford said. Echoed Ortiz, building all-new, virtualized, standardized platforms would be easier as the challenge is supporting existing customers with their tens of thousands of terminals while using next-gen networks. She said Intelsat's four software-defined satellites in development now will double its capacity over the next three years and necessitate a move to those standardized systems. But the transition of existing customers and their hardware will be long, she said. Under 5G standards, there are mechanisms and architectures for mixed networks using 5G and non-5G terminals, which helps, Ortiz said.
Intelsat is "bullish" on working on standards that pave the way to telecom integration, Ortiz said. She said it's working with suppliers about moving their platforms toward being more standards-based, though adopting virtualized products means for them big changes in business models and pricing. "Eventually they are ogling to come along," she said. Intelsat was active in 3rd Generation Partnership Project work on Release 17 and is part of Release 18 work, she said. It's also part of the MEF standards committee. Intelsat was the first satellite operator to receive MEF 3.0 Carrier Ethernet certification, said in March. Many see 3GPP's Release 17 greasing satcom's path to play a role in 5G but that rollout of 5G-type satcom services remains at least a couple years off (see 2205180003).