Antenna makers are rethinking business models and edging towards blended solutions as higher frequencies being adopted by mobile operators pushes them closer to satellite spectrum.

The pace of change means the satellite industry needs to do “a much better job to be integrated into terrestrial networks”, according to John Finney, founder and CEO of flat panel antenna maker Isotropic Systems.

With the most popular frequency filed in 5G being 24-28GHz, close to Ka-band, Finney believes the shelf life for DBB – the standard that runs through modem infrastructure – is limited as chipsets are being developed that are effectively waveforms that can go over those very high millimetre wave frequencies.

“I don’t see it as a particularly big leap to then assume that the next logical step is that you put those waveforms onto an antenna,” he told Connectivity Business on the sidelines of Satellite 2020 in Washington DC.

“And then, what do you know, we’re developing a digital backend that can host any waveform, whether it’s a specialised government waveform or it’s a 5G waveform.

“Eventually I think that something will give out. Either the big modem players will say, ok, that is the way to survive, which is to adapt to 5G. Or one of the big operators will give a little guy a chance – one of the new players coming in that has the same vision … to integrate a 5G waveform going back over satellite and back down to a standard 3GPP hub, and get rid of this proprietary standard piece that has stood in the way for a long time.

“I think somewhere along there there’s an opportunity right now to get properly integrated into terrestrial networks.”

The bigger picture

On the enterprise level, satellite operators such as SES (EPA:SESG) are increasingly looking to standardise their networks as they work closer with global cloud providers.

SES CEO Steve Collar told Connectivity Business in an upcoming interview how it was the first company of its kind to secure Metro Ethernet Forum certification.

The operator has also adopted ONAP for its orchestration platform, an open-source platform that telcos are using to automate their networks.

On 27 February, SES announced that France’s Orange (EPA:ORA) had become the first telco to adopt O3b mPower, its next-generation MEO constellation, to ramp up consumer and business services in the Central African Republic.

Isotropic is one of a new breed of antenna makers that SES is working with to develop systems that could handle customers transitioning to and from its satellites in MEO and GEO.  

Finney said the company aims to conduct over the air tests this September on SES’ current O3b MEO constellation, before delivering a prototype for mPower in 2021 and commencing production in time for the next-gen operations in 2022.

The company has recently changed its narrative from being focused on the consumer broadband market to large enterprise players such as SES, Inmarsat (LSE:ISAT) and Telesat. It has also recently won a US Defense Department contract that Finney declined to comment on.

Finney said it has put broadband terminals it has developed for aspiring LEO constellation players on the shelf, as it pivots towards “higher value” offerings where there is an existing market.

After raising a US$15m series A in January led by Boeing (NYSE:BA), the company is looking to raise more than US$35m in the next six months to prepare for its next phase of growth.  

Proprietary hardware

“There are some operators that are really leading the way on terrestrial integration,” Finney said.

“I think it's more the hardware providers that have market share that they can't give up on, and they worry about cannibalisation, and are not actually giving the industry what it wants. I think they're threatened now because clearly the evolution of mobile standards lend themselves to be integrated into new satellite hardware. 

“Either they do it or somebody else will”.

But focusing on the importance of hardware in the shift towards integrated services is short-sighted, according to Ramesh Ramaswamy, SVP and GM for the international division of satellite broadband giant Hughes Network Systems (HNS).

“To me it’s not about the hardware,” Ramaswamy said on the conference sidelines.

“Telcos are typically looking for plug and play. That happens in different ways. One clear way where we’ve positioned a plug and play approach for telcos is by supporting Layer 2 transmission in our Jupiter platform. Telcos don’t want to work with proprietary network configurations and worry about things like IP address configurations. Use of Layer 2 makes the satellite network a seamless extension of a terrestrial network.”

Hughes recently connected 1,000 Indonesia-based sites in what is thought to be the largest Layer 2 deployment to date.

“People always talk about standards from the perspective of overall cost reduction,” Ramaswamy continued.

“We want to build the right product with the right features for the lowest costs. The key is not to compromise innovation for the sake of standards. For example, most parts of a satellite terminal are standard anyway. Antennas are off the shelf. Most radios are off the shelf. The only thing we’re talking about as being proprietary, potentially, is the indoor unit, where most components are off the shelf with the guts of the innovation on a System On a Chip.”

Hughes works with hundreds of carriers in the enterprise segment, which interconnect with its SDWAN solutions.

Ramaswamy said its gateways and terminals are also Metro Ethernet Forum compatible.

“Within the network itself, how we operate should be less important as long as the edges of our network fit within a telco environment,” he said.

Spectrum implications

As terrestrial 5G encroaches on the satellite environment by moving up to higher frequencies, Ramaswamy stressed the need to continue to protect critical broadband services.

The satellite sector successfully fended off attempts to relinquish more frequencies for IMT at the latest WRC conference, however, this remains a constant threat for the sector as the debate around C-band in the US continues to swirl.

Ramaswamy continued: “Can you have the same device operating in both spectrums? I think it’ll probably happen in the lower bands, like the S-band and L-band frequencies rather than in the very higher bands.

“The spectrum that the MNO is contemplating for this sort of dual use is probably for applications like messaging rather than for broadband.”