Originally published by Space Intel Report on October 4, 2024. Read the original article here.

PARIS — Regional satellite fleet operators with assets in geostationary orbit acknowledged that many of their customers want a complementary offer in non-geostationary (NGSO), but they predicted that NGSO will never replace GEO for highly demanding government and corporate users.

The question for them is how far the attractions of LEO will advance, and how much of the market will remain for GEO-orbit satellites lasting 15-20 years in orbit.

United Airlines’s recent decision to adopt Starlink’s LEO service for its entire fleet, whose services will be offered free of charge to passengers, constituted a warning shot.

“It was a big splash” in the market, Ovzon Chief Executive Per Norén said. “If you sit on a lot of GEO assets, you don’t like that because those assets won’t be used. We have chosen GEO because military, security and public safety users want performance, mobility and security.”

Sweden-based Ovzon is a mobile government/military ground terminal manufacturer that has just launched its first satellite. Its customers insist on service guarantees that Starlink does not offer.

Norèn said less-critical military communications are now adopting NGSO solutions while retaining GEO capacity for the high-priority communications.

“What we have learned from being a satellite operator is that it’s a lot of heavy lifting, but if you design a satellite that meets customer needs, the economic margins we are going to have will be very strong for us,” Norén said here Sept. 17 at World Space Business Week (WSBW), organized by Novaspace Summits.

Ovzon is a special case because its business is focused on government and military mobile communications. But what of satellite operators with a larger mandate?

KT Sat of Korea, part of the KT Group, is launching its Koreasat 6A satellite in the coming weeks. Built by Thales Alenia Space, it has a telecom and television-broadcast payload and a navigation payload for the Korea Augmentation Satellite System (KASS). It will replace Koreasat 6.

“Multi-orbit is a concept,” said Kevin Choi, KT Sat’s chief technical officer. “It depends how the customer wants to use the connectivity. We get questions from customers about resilience, quality of service and committed information rates — and other things like the cost of the terminals.”

KT Sat is hedging its bets. It has capacity-lease agreements with both the Starlink and Eutelsat OneWeb NGSO constellations but has no intention of leaving GEO.

“We are trying to cope with the NGSOs,” Choi said. “We are reselling capacity and investing in some NGSO operators, and also investing in GEO.”

KT Sat recently demonstrated what it said was the first 5G NTN-standard link between a geostationary satellite and the ground. The new standard, adopted by the 3GPP organization, is usually associated with NGSO satellites.

it’s an example of what Choi said is the ultimate goal of having a single terminal handling terrestrial, 5G, NGSO and GEO services.

One advantage of GEO, Choi said, is that it faces fewer regulatory barriers.

“There are some countries where NGSO is not licensed,” he said. “A cruise vessel carrying NGSO and GEO may need to switch to GEO when it goes into a given territory.”

Part of KT Sat’s widening of its managed services officer is a maritime connectivity business that has 2,000 vessels as customers.

Spain-based satellite fleet operator Hispasat has long been a promoter of GEO connectivity in Europe and the Americas. The company has touted the fact that its Amazonas Nexus, in service in GEO only since July 2023, is now 75% full. Customers include fleet operator Intelsat.

“It has been a great success,” said Ignacio Sanchis, Hispasat’s chief commercial officer. Hispasat is also a large shareholder in Hisdesat, which operates two GEO-orbit satellite for Spain’s military.

Sanchis nonetheless said that an NGSO/LEO product “is a must-have, definitely,” for Hispasat. “We are combining LEO and GEO in a defensive way, to keep our customers, and we use MEO capacity for trunking. It’s a tactical approach, with reseller agreements and third-party agreements” for the NGSO bandwidth.

“Long term, our bet is Iris2,” the European Union’s proposed multi-orbit network for secure communications. Iris2 is still a subject of negotiations between the European Commission and the SpaceRise consortium wants to invest in it and operate it — including Hispasat.

Sanchis said NGSO/LEO systems often confront requirements from mobile network operators because of the cost of the terminals and the need for availability guarantees.

“They have their own commitments to the government and face severe penalties if they fail,” Sanchis said of the telcos that might be tempted by NGSO. “They are not willing to trade on that.”

UK-based satellite fleet operator Avanti, with an all-GEO fleet, “is facing a huge increase in the number of customer RFPs where you must have both [GEO and NGSO] to be compliant,” said Toby Robinson, Avanti’s chief strategy officer.

“Multi-orbit is complicated. We offered one or two trial multi-orbit solutions and you ultimately need integrated solutions. Many are prohibitively expensive and will take years for them to become affordable.”

He said Avanti has a customer from a NATO member nation that wanted a combined GEO, LEO and MEO option to be able to move secure communications from one to the other to avoid jamming around Ukraine. “It’s really expensive, but it is what they require.,” Robinson said.

In an example of a fit between NGSO and GEO, Robinson said, is a South African bank that wants satellite backup because of fiber outages and uses high-reliability GEO for point-to-point connections with a LEO overlay to back up GEO for those few applications that require a low-latency service.

GEO fleet operator ABS said said in the last year alone, certain regions have become fascinated with NGSO’s potential.

“Some of it, unfortunately, is driven by price, with only a best-efforts” commitment required, said Ramsey Khanfour, ABS’s chief commercial officer. NGSO, he said, “is a must-have to keep our GEO capacity relevant. A LEO solution with a GEO solution can fulfill customer demands and keep customer contract relations.

“So yes, our plan is to assess options to partner” for NGSO. “But we are not going to go out and push LEO alone. We are going to have to make sure it’s integrated with our GEO capacity to remain relevant.”

A large cruise ship, Khanfour said, or merchant vessels seeking to provide connectivity for their crews, can move to LEO.

“But on these same vessels, there is operational and other critical data, and government critical applications. GEO will always be relevant. But it will, unfortunately, shrink because of LEO and MEO.”

Originally published by Space Intel Report on October 4, 2024. Read the original article here.