A Digital Path Forward for WGS

12/11/2024

If there’s one thing we don’t lack for in the space industry, it’s acronyms. Come to think of it, neither does the defense industry.

One acronym that carries a lot of weight in both worlds is WGS, which stands for the U.S. DoD’s Wideband Global SATCOM satellite network, which the Space Force describes as, “the backbone of the U.S. military’s Wideband satellite communications capability.” The WGS provides worldwide communications for U.S. government agencies, the Department of Defense, international partners and NATO.

WGS, like most space networks today, is anchored by legacy terminals with parabolic antennas feeding purpose-built, signal routing and processing hardware. Analog-based components from multiple vendors that make up a terminal’s service chains must go through a formal certification process to demonstrate that they will conform and operate in the WGS environment.

But how would you go about certifying a digital terminal, especially one with a phased array electronically steerable antenna (ESA)?

Successful WGS certification with its stringent analog performance requirements can be difficult to get through today even in the best of cases. And with the current certification procedures not yet fully adapted to digital architectures it can be nearly impossible. This is bad for both vendors and the U.S. military since it delays or even halts the deployment of next generation terminals and capabilities.

As the space industry continues its march toward a digital future, DISA recently hosted the ongoing MIL-STD-188-164/165 working group with both industry and WGS stakeholders including U.S. Space Force Delta 8 to explore how to proceed toward digital interoperability for large, complex, established, and mission critical space networks such as WGS. The list of topics is long, ranging from security to the specific requirements of LEO, MEO and GEO operation. While some topics have heightened importance to defense applications, the entire industry will benefit from common standards.

I’m pleased to announce that DIFI has formed a special Working Group to provide industry input into this process. Nine companies have already volunteered to be part of the new WGS Working Group, and new members are invited to join.

DIFI’s WGS and recently established ESA Working Groups will be working together closely on this effort since ESAs are increasingly important to many of the advancements in edge capabilities needed to better support the warfighter. The ESA Working Group has already begun addressing some of the specific needs for managing ESAs in the existing DIFI specification and will be proposing enhancements to the existing Open-AMIP/BMIP specifications.

---

A Rising D2D Tide Can Lift All Boats

11/12/2024

Just about everybody is excited about the prospects of direct-to-device (D2D) satellite connectivity to cell phones and other mobile devices, even if guardedly so.

Some satellite operators see the potential for breaking out of their historical niches, while mobile network operators (MNO) anticipate more access to untapped remote markets with upsides big enough to pursue. Just last week, for example, Apple announced an additional $1.5 billion investment in partner Globalstar to fund a new constellation.

The ‘guarded’ part is important, however. Obstacles remain in making these two worlds work smoothly together in a way that can support high consumer service expectations.

In a recent session at Silicon Valley Space Week covered by Constellations content partner Space Intel Report, Mark Dankberg, Chairman of Viasat, highlighted two of the biggest challenges: network interoperability and national sovereignty. Dankberg is also Chairman of the Mobile Satellite Services Association (MSSA), a non-profit industry association formed earlier this year to advance global mobile connectivity for D2D and Internet of Things (IoT) services.

To greatly summarize Dankberg on network interoperability, mobile satellite services providers should make their networks compatible not just with the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standard that enables 5G, but also with each other’s satellites.

As Peter de Selding wrote for Space Intel Report, “Dankberg said the mobile satellite service industry is faced with the same question posed to MNOs years ago: Remain stove-piped with your own network or open it up to competing providers to allow seamless roaming for customers, and to share the cost of cell towers?”

My (extremely) modest contribution to Dankberg’s premise is just this, it will have benefits far beyond just D2D.

Here’s the good news: if satcom network operators follow the 3GPP standard for 5G release 17 or later, they’ll have the technical solution needed for nearly all satcom interoperability: D2D, low data rate IOT, broadband high data rate applications and more. And not just between satellite operators, but with telecommunications infrastructure they connect to as well.

The combination of vertical and horizonal infrastructure interoperability enabled by the 3GPP standards will open new markets, while also making satellite services simpler for consumers and bring additional benefits, such as more effective terminal-to-beam assignments and better mobility in a spot beam satellite architecture.

And Dankberg is also right about his second major point, sovereignty concerns will be a major challenge for regulators which must be addressed. I couldn’t agree more, and, again, not just for D2D. National security factors always have been a challenge, especially for satellites.

That said, however, while interoperability between networks is one area of my professional expertise, interoperability between nations isn’t, so I’ll leave that one to the MSSA.

---

Changing the Narrative on 5G?

10/16/2024

That’s what Deutsche Telekom (DT) says it’s doing, and they may have a point.

At its 2024 Capital Markets Day press conference reported by Telecom TV, DT CEO Tim Höttges said, “5G is a huge success story. And this is a narrative I would like to bring home. We took a look at the 5G business case. We started early with 5G. Everybody [else] is complaining that you can’t make money with 5G but I can assure you, 5G is our success story.”

Indeed, media coverage of 5G has been in phase 2 of the typical from-hype-to disappointment curve lately, but that coverage has been largely focused on the consumer markets expectation of faster speeds. The greater market opportunities are expected in enterprise applications and “machine” connectivity use cases such as IoT.

According to GSMA Intelligence, the research arm of the industry association for global system mobile technology (GSMA), “With slow average revenue per user growth in the connectivity business, revenue diversification remains an imperative for operators. As demand expands for solutions across a range of technology areas (cloud, edge, IoT, security), the B2B segment offers significant growth opportunities.”

How significant? The group’s latest research report highlights “an addressable market of more than $400 billion for operators looking to grow revenues in the B2B space. This equates to approximately 35% of the existing mobile operator revenue base worldwide.”

Can satellite get a piece of that growth?

5G will play a big role in bringing those enterprise services to market, in large part because its foundation in the 3GPP standard bakes in advanced services and interoperability, including interoperability with non-terrestrial networks through 5G NTN.

In his press conference, DT’s Höttges cited the success his company has had both in Europe and through its U.S. T-Mobile group where he noted, that at T-Mobile US, “we deployed the 2.5GHz spectrum across the country, and we have blown out the lights of Verizon and AT&T… because we were able to provide countrywide 5G services while these guys were waiting for the clearing of the 3.5 GHz spectrum with a totally different propagation, another build-out logic and more expensive investments – our success is very much based on this clear commitment toward 5G based on the mid-band spectrum.”

The DT companies are betting on scale advantages including those enabled by standards-based technologies like 5G. 5G network coverage in the European national companies is set to rise from 78 percent currently to 95 percent in 2027.

According to DT, Brand Finance ranks Deutsche Telekom as the industry’s most valuable brand worldwide, up by 84 percent compared with 2020. Maybe they’re working on the right narrative.

---

Network APIs Gaining Traction

9/17/2024

As mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been following a growing effort in the telecom industry to inspire development of network application programming interfaces (APIs). Several recent announcements convince me even more that it’s both a real trend, and one the satellite industry should be watching.

APIs allow developers to easily integrate software they create with other applications and platforms. As communication networks become increasingly software defined, network APIs allow enterprise customers and third-party developers to create software that brings additional benefits, including capitalizing on advanced 5G features.

This month Deutsche Telekom AG (DT), T-Mobile (a DT subsidiary) and hubraum, DT’s tech incubator, announced they are hosting their first ever global API competition. Developers from around the world are invited to create new business solutions for customers leveraging APIs in five key areas: Automotive, Broadcasting, Government, Healthcare and Industrial.

Network APIs are not new, but they have mostly been limited to working in only one provider’s network—or network of networks like DT--thus gaining proprietary benefit for that network operator. However, for network APIs to achieve full benefit for the user they should work across multiple networks.

Enter Korea’s three biggest telcos: Korea Telecom, South Korea Telecom and LG Uplus, which announced they have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to work together on a common API standard which they expect will lower developer barriers and shorten the time to market, while also boosting the benefits to Korea’s national infrastructure.

Makes sense, but what if a car company wants its apps to work in Korea and Japan and Idaho and Kenya?

Just last week, Ericsson announced it was joining with many of the world’s largest telecom operators, including América Móvil, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Reliance Jio, Singtel, Telefonica, Telstra, T-Mobile, Verizon and Vodafone to form a new venture that would “combine and sell” network APIs on a global scale. According to Ericsson, Vonage and Google Cloud will partner with the new company, providing access to their ecosystems of developers and partners.

If I sound like a cheerleader, I don’t mean to. There are plenty of challenges ahead in technology, operations and business models. In the new company mentioned above, for example, Ericsson gets half the revenue and all the other companies split the other half. Is that a viable and scalable model or just a meta version of a proprietary one? We’ll see. But just imagine if global connectivity--including satellite--could be actively controlled in a way that allows the application to optimize the connectivity for its needs within the constraints on the transport technology. Connectivity needs for all customers—consumer, government and enterprises—could be optimized to maximize user experience and network value.

---

Is AMIP as Good as a Mile? Progress on Making ESAs Mainstream

8/21/2024

DIFI’s new working group on standards for Electronically Steered Antenna (ESA) interoperability is making much progress, in part because it is much needed and because the 35 member organizations are much engaged, including the U.S. Army.

ESAs are critically important for achieving maximum value for goals such as multi-orbit, multi-mission support, mobility applications and more. Unfortunately, for reasons discussed in an earlier post, the OpenAMIP and OpenBMIP standards that apply today were crafted for a different, far less dynamic era of ground and space technologies.

In a nutshell, the existing monitor and control (M&C) standards were created for a modem controlling a relatively dumb, single purpose parabolic antenna. As a result, more intelligent, multi-purpose phased array antennas are forced to operate as if they were poorly performing parabolics.

The good news is that current standards do their foundational work well, which means DIFI’s working group can focus on augmenting AMIP and BMIP to better mesh M&C with the advanced features and capabilities of ESAs, rather than starting from scratch building an entirely new standard.

For example, the group is exploring topics including handling variations in beam power, support for antennas that can do multi-beam and fast beam switching, and timing synchronization, which is front and center at the moment.

STG iDirect, the original developers of OpenAMIP/BMIP, are fully on board as members of DIFI’s working group. I particularly want to thank Jeremy Turpin, Chief Scientist and Co-Founder of ALL.SPACE, for his able and meticulous leadership of the working group.

I encourage any organizations with an interest in ESA antenna operability or the missions that require them, especially government groups who need ESAs to support multi-orbit and multi-mission operations, to join the DIFI ESA Working Group. Visit https://dificonsortium.org/join-now/ for more information on this and other working groups.

---

Network APIs and Digital Transformation

7/24/2024

According to McKinsey & Company, network APIs “are critical to companies seamlessly tapping into 5G’s powerful capabilities for hundreds of potential use cases, such as credit card fraud prevention, glitch-free videoconferencing, metaverse interactions, and entertainment. If developers have access to the right network APIs, enterprises can create 5G-driven applications that leverage features like speed on demand, low-latency connections, speed tiering, and edge compute discovery.”

Network APIs have been discussed before in the communications world, but they’re having their time in the sun once again with the evolving network ecology of digital transformation, cloud native, 5G, AI and more. They bridge the worlds of networks, IT, application development and, potentially, satellite. But only if they can be standardized.

That’s the key. Most previous network API projects in telecom have been driven by individual operators seeking to achieve competitive advantage for their networks. When apps only run in one system however, there’s little incentive for third party developers to deliver innovative products.

Instead, the burden falls on the network operator to develop their own apps. Although telcos employ many, many software programmers around the world, they are not optimized to be product developers. Their core business is to provide reliable connectivity services.

What’s more, as we’ve seen for decades in the software world, standard APIs enable enterprises in vertical industries to create their own apps to leverage tech platforms. That’s where competitive advantage helps both the customer and the network operator the most. For example, what if an airline could directly manage and optimize the communications links to their aircraft to ensure the best possible customer experience for their elite customers? A standardized API working across all of their satcom providers could give them this capability.

This month, the GSMA and TM Forum announced they are collaborating on a complete set of APIs to monetize network capabilities using TM Forum’s widely adopted Open API standards and the Linux Foundation’s CAMARA APIs. There’s still a distance to go, of course, but there seems to be real momentum and it’s exciting to see this kind attention.

The satellite industry is too small a part of the global telecom fabric to go it alone on APIs. We should carefully watch what’s happening elsewhere towards achieving standards and participate where we have a common interest in common APIs. The upside is tremendous for advancing interoperability and adding value to satellite network services.

---