5G offers lots of promise, but what’s the reality? And what does it mean for the satellite industry?

Constellations spoke with Tom Stroup, President of the Satellite Industry Association about the unique role satellite can play to fulfill the promise of 5G, its potentially transformative effect on the industry and the progress and challenges to bring it to fruition.

As broadband connectivity has evolved from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘need to have,’ 5G has long been touted for its potential to bring high bandwidth, seamless connectivity to end users across a range of networks, from terrestrial to satellite, no matter where they are. That could be to download an HD movie to a phone in seconds in a car, ship or plane, or to connect billions of devices across remote and rural areas.

“That is the potential that 5G brings,” Stroup said, “and it really highlights the opportunity for the satellite industry to provide the key attributes of ubiquity, mobility and security offered by 5G.”

Relative to other systems, Stroup reminded listeners that satellite is the only technology capable of providing service to large portions of the earth, of providing service to airplanes and maritime vessels in air and at sea, and for security, providing coverage lost when systems go down due to natural or manmade disasters.

Stroup said that’s been true with respect to satellite systems generally, but especially for deployment of 5G systems.

“Whether for proliferation of IOT devices in remote areas, coverage for devices on the move, caching at network's edge for back haul, we've seen a recognition that many of the things that are desired by 5G can only be achieved by what satellite networks provide.”

5G Gamechanger: Standardization and Interoperability

With 5G designed as a ‘network of networks’ that brings together terrestrial and satellite, Stroup believes 5G can help transform a satellite industry that has operated as a standalone, unable to seamlessly connect with other networks.

With the inclusion of satellite into the 3GPP standards, Stroup said 5G will help integrate it into terrestrial systems as part of 5G networks.

“5G represents an opportunity for a shift in the relationship between the terrestrial and the satellite communications industries,” Stroup said. As a result, he expects industries to cooperate more given satellite’s ability to expand coverage for broadband networks.

Not that reconciling multiple network types is easy, but the path is unfolding.

A key innovation of the standard is 5G NR, or fifth generation new radio, which is the air interface for the radio frequency portion of the circuit between the mobile device and the base station. Stroup explained how 5G is initially being made available through improvements in LTE, but that will be followed with by a major step up with the new standalone air interface for 5G NR.

By deploying this waveform, Stroup said the satellite industry will have the opportunity to access a market of far greater size, essentially billions of devices, whether IOT or mobile phone devices.

It will also provide interoperability access across networks. “This is something that's been talked about for a long time within the satellite industry.”

While companies have deployed proprietary networks, conducting R&D to provide their own technical advantages, those, Stroup said, don't provide the type of interoperability and access to mass markets that will be realized with the deployment of 5G.

“To achieve the vision of 5G, we need all of those systems working together,” Stroup said, referring to mobile, satellite and other services. “That's one of the challenges, being able to provide interoperable service across all those different networks. One of the major changes that we see within the satellite industry is the deployment of a standardized device and standardized networks that will be able to access all of these devices.”

Testing Testing

As for progress, Stroup said that Release 17 of 3GPP, which includes the satellite technology, is in the testing phase. And because satellite infrastructure is deployed in space, it needs to go through extensive testing.

“Once we know what the standard was, and what the characteristics of the standard were going to be, we now have the opportunity to build it into the networks and test it before starting to deploy it. So our companies are now going through the testing process, testing the air interfaces,” he said.

As for timing, Stroup expects to see deployment of 5G capable satellite systems sometime within the next year or two.

And then, for the world’s 7 billion people, of which there are more devices than humans, satellite can begin helping connect them.

To hear more about 5G and its application in the military, emergency services, and for traffic and border control, linking drones, IoT devices and equipment, click here for the full interview.