[Satellite News 11-26-08] Developers of integrated satellite-terrestrial handsets and modules are very excited about how the consumer market is responding to their technology, but the companies acknowledge having to address several challenges involving the satellite elements of these products.
    Jani Lyrintzis, director of wireless solutions for Elektrobit (EB), told Satellite News that one of the major challenges of developing its recently unveiled satellite-terrestrial Connectivity Module, a portable device that enables ubiquitous data communications using satellite or terrestrial networks, was working with outdated satellite technology. “If you look at what is available today in the satellite space, it is very old technology with very low data rates and bandwidth, typically a couple of kilobits, and this device provides hundreds of kilobits of data rates,” he said.
    The issue of available capacity is a universal problem for all sectors of the satellite industry. Several companies have made capacity the central issue in this discussion.
    ViaSat Senior Vice President Tom Moore, whose company aims to provide more broadband capacity in the United States with its planned ViaSat-1, acknowledged that the capacity available is not nearly enough to meet the high demand for devices like EB’s Connectivity Module. “As demand for capacity increases, larger wired and wireless terrestrial companies are making adjustments behind the scenes for customers that use more of the bandwidth. … I would say that [this issue] illustrates the demand for services like ours. The demand for bandwidth is insatiable.”
The capacity issue also is driving competition in Europe to establish a presence in the satellite-terrestrial market. Several companies, including ICO Communications, Solaris Mobile, TerreStar Europe and the Eutelsat-SES Astra joint venture, have filed with the European Commission for use of the Pan-European 2GHz MSS S-band spectrum to initiate, among other objectives, a drive towards satellite-cellular consumer technology.
    Ben Gore, a director at TerreStar Europe, told Satellite News that the current wireless environment in Europe presents several opportunities that his company hopes to take advantage of. “The European wireless user base is somewhat more sophisticated than North America, with penetration rates that run as high as about 120 percent,” he said. “There are four or five wireless carriers in every European country, and there is still a very sharp divide when you cross a national border. That is when customers get into roaming charges and different pricing.”
Lyrintzis discussed a second challenge in the road towards achieving the market potential of EB’s Connectivity Module. “Integrating the satellite technology with the existing cellular technologies into a compact form factor was also a challenge for us,” he said. “There was a lot of interaction and interference between the land mobile radios when developing the module for the public safety domain.”
    Mobile Satellite Ventures Vice President of Strategy, Christian Gates, said his company’s approach to the form factor issue is that “instead of having a multiple chipset solution and a customized satellite interface produced by someone in the satellite industry we went to Qualcomm and audaciously asked them to incorporate a satellite communications capability into their EVDO specification,” he said. “What that means is — the chip that goes into the phone is not a special satellite chip and it is not something that was created to work with a specific satellite system. It is a terrestrial cellular chip that has a satellite communications area interface as an added feature attached or embedded into it as a modification of a terrestrial interface.”
    Gates said this approach simultaneously addresses another major challenge for product developers — cost. Even if technology, bandwidth and integration are all fully leveraged, how will consumers afford a new device in an economic climate that has drastically reduced the consumer mass market?
    Lyrintzis believes the answer to lowering the cost of EB’s module is through integration. “Even though there is a premium involved with bringing satellite access into the equation, we have a roadmap to lower the cost of the device while increasing the level of integration to more pipe links, which is how I think we can most effectively drive down the cost.”
    EB is even marketing its Connectivity Module concept as an IP data pipe, providing ubiquitous IP connectivity that can be satellite or cellular-terrestrial based and then integrated into several different applications. “You can bring Internet into your vehicle — whether it’s a car or boat or for use in the public safety domain on [land mobile radios] or as a consumer device. You can have this module in your pocket and have a Bluetooth connection to your regular cell phone to make it a satellite phone,” said Lyrintzis, who also believes that the utility-like quality of the module will appeal to consumers even in the most difficult economic environment.
    “Customers will see that the biggest benefit for them is this ubiquitous connectivity aspect,” he said, noting that it is much cheaper to have one device handling multiple tasks rather than several expensive devices handling their own.