The Future of Mobile Satellite Services: from M2M to Broadband Everywhere

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1 The Future of Mobile Satellite Services: from M2M to Broadband Everywhere Stimulating new mass market satellite mobile services Antonio Arcidiacono Director of Innovation Eutelsat S.A. Firenze, October 14 th, /31/2013 Eutelsat - Antonio Arcidiacono 1

2 Preparing the ground for new mobile satellite services Mobile satellite services have been steadily growing in the last 30 years promising to become the next big market after satellite broadcasting How can we move from a set of B2B centric services to a mature set of B2C services? Several attempts have been made starting from the early 90 s but, with the exception of the XM/Sirius case, all developed services have reached between few thousand B2B terminals or well below one million B2C terminals 3 questions : Where and how would new mobile services develop in the coming years? Will new services finally reach millions of customers? How can we support the emergence of those services? 10/31/2013 Eutelsat - Antonio Arcidiacono 2

3 Mobile Satellite Services : sizing the market today Market size Aeronautical IP access Maritime IP access Terrestrial IP access Broadcast B2B 1000 s s s Very small?? Main players Panasonic Row 44 Live TV Inmarsat Inmarsat Intelsat SES Eutelsat Inmarsat Globalstar Iridium Eutelsat B2C NA Very small s 10 s M?? Thuraya Iridium Globalstar Inmarsat XM/Sirius?? M2M With the exception of the XM/Sirius case all the attempts to grow a consumer market with 10 s M users has not been successful so far 10/31/2013 Eutelsat - Antonio Arcidiacono 3

4 What do we need to go mass market? The market size for mobile satellite services has been limited so far, with only one major notable exception, to mobile B2B services using expensive user terminals, relatively high service cost and collective service access To go mass market we need to look for (new) services with Low cost terminals Low service cost per end user The aeronautical example Internet access on airplanes has been so far limited by The high initial CAPEX per aircraft to be compared with a slow service take off in terms of generated revenues per flying aircraft The small capacity made available to each flying aircraft vs the cost per Mbyte for the provided service The mobile broadcast example Satellite Mobile Broadcasting has only been a success in the XM/Sirius case Thanks to the relevant initial investment to develop and distribute end user equipment available at very low cost to end customers and pre-installed into cars Thanks to the continued investment effort to grow an installed base today well over the 25 M terminals in operation 10/31/2013 Eutelsat - Antonio Arcidiacono 4

5 How can satellite low cost terminal be made available? What satellite actors can do... Developing or adopting low cost, consumer grade key components and make them available to the market Software defined radio based end user terminals As indicated in a previous paper I presented to this conference 3 years ago in Cagliari, the evolution towards the use of existing SDR chipset developed for terrestrial applications is probably the most promising route that can be followed to bring down satellite terminal costs at the level of consumer equipment In view of the peculiarities of the satellite transmission channels it would be useful (for ESA) to fund evolutions of the terrestrial SDR chipsets to extend their functionalities to specific satellite applications for example : the terrestrial SDR chipsets are designed for a channel bandwidth of a maximum of 10 or 20 MHz; in the satellite case it would make sense to extend this range to 40 to 100 MHz) By supporting the initial mass market production of the first production batches creating the premises for the availability of low cost end user terminals This would attract traditional consumer market manufacturers to develop satellite specific terminals at very low cost Reference designs should be made available so that different manufacturers could compete 10/31/2013 Eutelsat - Antonio Arcidiacono 5

6 What about the aeronautical market? The present offer in the aeronautical market is dominated by The initial CAPEX impact Equipment cost including installation Aircraft immobilization The running OPEX impact Cost per volume transferred per end customer and per flight On board equipment weight The areas covered by the provided services Regional and therefore potentially in competition with air to ground services Long haul implying a global or multiregional coverage What can be done? Develop specific technologies aimed at reducing the initial CAPEX impact Evolve towards HTS based services to reduce the cost/volume while increasing the service quality Develop multiband (Ku and Ka-band) low cost antennas and support a solution to be flexibly deployed in local and global markets More? 10/31/2013 Eutelsat - Antonio Arcidiacono 6

7 The M2M opportunity LARGE NUMBERS => Low terminal cost The Internet of Things is meant to become, by the end of the decade, the telecommunication market with largest size and the highest growth LOW VOLUMES => Low service cost At the same time the common characteristic of all M2M applications is that of consuming very low quantities of data per end terminal with a corresponding ARPU per end user terminal in the vicinity of 1 /$ per month per device... FROM SMALL AREAS TO GLOBAL COVERAGE Different M2M applications are being developed ranging From very localized services (e.g. in home automation) To national or regional services (e.g. Vehicle telematics) To global services (e.g. Aircraft engines real time telemetry services) What should ESA and satellite operators do to capture a substantial market share of the M2M market? 10/31/2013 Eutelsat - Antonio Arcidiacono 7

8 What should ESA and satellite operators do... Identify promising market segments for satellite M2M expansion Home automation + e-health Smart grid and service to utilities Vehicular telematics SCADA??? Support development of technologies common to different applications to create initial economies of scale Support technologies compatible with Low cost terminals (10 s of /$) Low service cost per end device (< 1 /$ per month) Support large scale pilot services in collaboration with satellite operators and service providers 10/31/2013 Eutelsat - Antonio Arcidiacono 8