[Satellite News 04-08-09] As companies cut travel budgets they communicate more, and as such, the overall information technology sector is in a good position to help other sectors in a time of tough circumstances around the globe, Hamadoun Toure, secretary general of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), said during the “Satellite SWOT: New Opportunities, New Risks, New Technologies in Turbulent Times” panel at SATELLITE 2009.
    Toure reminded everyone that as a satellite engineer, he believes that satellite technology plays an important role, providing advantages such as coverage, flexibility, and ease of operation. “Satellite technology has been treated unfairly, portrayed as being a high-cost solution,” he said. “Satellites have long lifetimes, generally 7 to 15 years, which is very important. This provides financial stability which is very important.”
    Dave Bettinger, CTO at iDirect, was also was bullish on the future. “North American sales appear to be relatively flat but we are excited about growth opportunities in the Middle East, and Asia,” he said. “Eastern Europe has been pleasantly surprising.” Bettinger said the communications-on-the-move market continued to be an important one for the company. Commercial aircraft and maritime market segments also are expected to show strong growth.
    Alasdair Calder, director of product development at Spacenet, said the outlook for the company is optimistic, as it is always good to have a guaranteed revenue stream from clients but that they still need to grow the business. Spacenet will be focusing on selling more value-added services, such as digital video to their existing clients. “You are always trying to get a bigger share of the customer’s wallet,” he said.
    Calder also sees good sales of satellite equipment and services in the disaster recovery market. “Network downtime has a significant economic impact,” Calder said. “Big box retailers have told us that if their terrestrial network is down there is $100,000 of risk due to unauthorized credit swipes.”
    Comtech EF Data has been enjoying steady revenues from government sales, but the company continues to receive orders for the commercial markets and interest from places that might surprise, said Fred Morris, general manager, Vipersat Group, Comtech EF Data. Cellular backhaul networks continue to be a good revenue driver and are the most important of any type of hybrid network. “As cellular companies rollout their networks, they consume more satellite services and cost becomes more important,” he said.
    Mark Piening, vice president of marketing for Uplogix, agreed with Morris, noting that hybrid networks are growing significantly but require lots of talented people with diverse skill sets to keep them operating. Uplogix’s network management appliance automates network monitoring and can take steps to restore remote satellite modems, stabilized VSAT platforms, routers, switches and servers. This minimizes the labor needed to operate an advanced hybrid network, ultimately lowering operating costs. Piening noted that their value proposition is best when VSAT terminals are in costly, hard to reach locations and they see an increasing amount of business in the cellular backhaul, maritime, oil drilling, and pipeline control networks.
    Michael Downey, CTO of Glowlink, pointed out when companies institute advanced modulation techniques they realize that they need a way to monitor them. Glowlink, which manufactures DSP-based satellite interference detection systems with integrated geolocation, has developed this capability at the request of their clients. Downey felt that advanced carrier monitoring techniques will only become more important in the future.
    Bill Schmidt, vice president of government services for Xtar, was optimistic about the future based expected uptake of commercial X-band services by governments. About 80 percent of U.S. government satellite bandwidth needs are being fulfilled by commercial satellite services, and Xtar will by the first fixed satellite services operator to provide X-band services to the U.S. military, NATO, and allied forces.
    Yoel Gat, Chairman and CEO of RaySat, brought a light moment to the panel explaining to the audience that his company’s satellite video solution was aimed at the automobile industry, and that, unfortunately, they had chose the worst time in the last 100 years to launch their product. Gat was disappointed at the slow uptake but expressed optimism that the market would improve.