Opinion

Have you ever been really, really thirsty?  Not just dry-mouthed in the middle of the night or longing for a cold drink after an afternoon in the sun. But truly parched? Probably not. In developed nations, hydration became a mantra, and water bottles became a fashion accessory sometime in the past 10 years. No doubt,...

In college, I learned of a concept both fearful and awesome — one that is a measure of chaos and reminds us of the importance of order: entropy. Put in a social science sense, humans fight against the effects of entropy; we organize societies, develop language and set rules, norms, and laws for ourselves. In...

Discussions at SATELLITE 2023 last month ranged from the elephant(s) in the room – Starlink, Kuiper, orbital debris, and new funding challenges – to opportunities like direct-to-device and new technologies on the horizon that are making satellite and space an exciting and engaging topic. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at NSR’s takeaways...

Starlink have been making a ‘splash’ in the world of maritime and the industry has observed with keen interest the growth and deployment of the LEO service. Connectivity is becoming more crucial and digitalization tools have become almost standard protocol. With IT management interactions in real-time, LEO services such as Starlink Maritime are becoming highly...

By 2030, global use of commercial drones is expected to increase tenfold, and the market is growing exponentially, especially due to geopolitical concerns and increasing commoditization. But with rapid growth comes new regulation, and this creates new business opportunities for developers and providers of satellite-based connectivity for drone technology. The international drone market can be...

Open RAN Architecture Changes the Game The next generation of cellular networks, 5G-Advanced, is set to be drastically different in terms of how the infrastructure is built and deployed. One of the most radical changes relates to how the architecture embraces virtualization and cloud-native features, with functionality implemented in software, such as with cloud-native network...

Number of Aircraft Offering IFC Reaches New Heights According to our in-flight connectivity (IFC) quarterly tracker, the fourth quarter of 2022 saw the installed base of connected aircraft surpass the 10,000 marker for the first time, underlining the market’s resilient growth in the post-COVID era. Just over 18 months ago, the IFC installed base increased...

The Federal Communications Commission approved in September a new regulation where all non-functional Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites have to be deorbited no later than five years after their decommission. Prior to that new rule, deorbiting out-of-duty satellites was a task that could take up to 25 years. A stricter modification on deorbiting was expected by...

A few short years ago, the question posed by that title would have been laughable. How could the future of the internet – with its 997 terabits per second of global capacity at the end of 2022 – depend on something as costly and bandwidth-constrained as satellite? But the idea is not as strange as...

As the commercialization of Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) continues at pace, there is a growing concern as to the continued availability of insurance for satellites operating in it. The last few years have seen Swiss Re, AIG, Aspen Re, and AGCS (Allianz) exit the space insurance market, with several others pulling back their coverage. The key...