Software-defined satellite systems offer dynamic capacity and coverage that can be tailored to the end users’ specific needs. These satellites have revolutionary potential, and provide a sharp competitive edge to industry players.
To learn more, Constellations spoke with a panel of experts on the current state of SDS: Park Boonyubol of Thaicom; Dallas Kasaboski of Analysys Mason; and John Chay of Kratos. Listen to the full episode, or read our four takeaways below.
Takeaway 1: In a disrupted market, software-defined satellites are a protected investment.
Software-defined satellites (SDS) have disrupted the market for one major reason: flexibility. “There are more options, and players want to have flexibility, they want to have more capabilities,” explained Dallas Kasaboski, Principal Analyst at Analysys Mason. SDS allows an industry player to stand out, do more, and prepare for a disrupted, quickly evolving market.
SDS allows an operator to automatically build in flexibility that might become needed down the road, but which is impossible to predict. “Software-defined satellites will allow you to really protect the investment,” explained John Chay, VP of Sales APAC at Kratos. When the market shifts drastically, a software-defined satellite can “reshape the beams and point it to where business will drive revenue in the future.”
“It’s difficult to find a concrete requirement for 15 years,” said Park Boonyubol, SVP of Technology and Satellite Operations at Thaicom. This is why software-defined satellites are such a powerful investment—they are “adaptable for any market demand change.”
Takeaway 2: GEO is trending towards greater flexibility in order to work with NGSO.
While GEO and NGSO constellations continue to face off, software-defined capabilities are re-shaping both orbits. But NGSO might have the initial upper hand when it comes to embracing softwarization. “There’s no on-size-fits-all solution,” said Park Boonyubol, SVP of Technology and Satellite Operations at Thaicom. “But NGSO has a lot of advantages.”
But along with market advantages, NGSO also comes with another requirement—greater flexibility built into a satellite on the ground floor. “There’s a floor of necessity that non-GEO satellites require,” said Kasaboski. “They require some flexibility, whether it’s steerable beams or reconfigurable bandwidth, just to make the constellation work or to make it work a bit more efficiently.”
While GEO remains the land of older, larger satellites, some level of flexibility will also begin to take hold in the higher orbits. “There’s very few satellites that are looking to be launched that don’t have any flexibility at all,” said Kasaboski. “There is a trend toward full flexibility with GEO to work with non-GEO.”
Takeaway 3: SDS flexibility allows operators to manage satellite systems in non-traditional ways.
Some satellite operators are looking for alternative satellite management models, and with SDS, flexible capacity means more management options. For example, with flexible capacity, an operator could choose to offer less total capacity per satellite, make the satellite smaller, and lower launch costs.
“Another good example is using data analytics and artificial intelligence to look into the pattern of life of the utilization on the satellite,” said Chay. In the daytime, capacity will be higher over a city region, but when night falls, capacity will fall and can be channeled to a different city in a different part of the world.
Because SDS can manage market demand dynamically, operators can also oversubscribe the megahertz and reach more total customers, who individually only use a small portion of the capacity for a small amount of time. “You are now allowed to overbook capacity. A 100 gig satellite, you can potentially sell 120,” explained Chay. “That’s a lot of revenue if you can fulfill the full capacity of the satellite by reselling, moving the capacity dynamically from one region to another.”
Takeaway 4: Major SDS rollouts will take place in the next few years.
“Generally speaking, software-defined satellites themselves have been a bit slower to develop,” said Kasaboski. But once that technology is in place, it will be much easier to update the entire system. Industry players who adopt software-defined satellites will have a sharp competitive edge in the years to come, as end-users become accustomed to on-demand capabilities. “I believe that on-demand is something that everyone needs now,” said Boonyubol.
When asked to predict the future, all three experts suggested that software-defined satellites will storm the market in the next few years. “There are specific orders that have been made for satellites that are expected to come out in 2026, 2027,” said Kasaboski. According to Chay, Airbus and Talos will likely see first launch by the end of 2027.
For more on satellite network orchestration and minute-by-minute flexibility, listen to the full podcast.
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