If we’re looking for signals that space is on the verge of going mainstream, the recent Apple/Globalstar announcement of emergency satellite-to-cell phone service is the most powerful one to date, especially when combined with hints and announcements like those from companies including AST SpaceMobile, SpaceX/T-Mobile and others.

The scale multiplier implicit in supporting hundreds of millions of consumer iPhones around the world is simply staggering when compared to traditional space industry operations. So the announcement also highlights how far we must go to get from being simply “on the verge” of mainstream to becoming a core part of the telecom infrastructure. Many of the hurdles lie under the hood of systems and network interoperability.

The announcement made me think about the old 2G days when our cell phones were tied to one carrier and we had to actively watch out for roaming charges. In a future where billions of cell phone users are demanding seamless passage, not just between cell providers but also between satellites and satellite operators … well space networks just aren’t equipped for that today. And it’s not just a ground system challenge, it’s about chipsets and waveforms, back-office systems working together, business processes and more.

Achieving this kind of market scale, not to mention a roaming capability, starts with standards at key interface points to allow both interoperability and innovation. The communications carriers have learned this lesson, although even there you find islands of semi-standards and legacy proprietary systems that still need smoothing. Yet even with telecom’s warts, the satellite industry today stands in marked contrast. Take something as fundamental as DVB-S2X, for example. Everybody uses DVB-S2X, yet few products are truly interoperable because each modem company tweaks it, trying to squeeze out every ounce of competitive performance. That defies the commoditization needed to achieve consumer market levels of scale.

There’s a list of to-dos needed in bringing the carrier and satellite networks together, however some of the most important steps are:

• Truly implementing one of the waveform standards consistently in a way that supports rather than undermining interoperability.
• Adoption of MEF and related standards that allow terrestrial operators to provision across satcom.
• On the business side, tighter relationships with the carriers will be needed to consume the great wave of additional satellite capacity planned for launch over the next decade.

The good news, based on recent satellite events and research reports I’ve seen, is that industry leaders are coming to the conclusion that bandwidth optimization is no longer the guiding principle in our business. Scale is.

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