Antarctica. Photo: Andreas Kambanis (Flickr)

[Via Satellite 12-18-2015] Northern Sky Research (NSR) has released a new report on Arctic and Antarctic markets, finding that demand for services such as telephony/trunking and video should drive the satcom market to reach $447 million by 2024. The research firm’s “Polar Satellite Markets” report finds a growth market supported by a range of applications, orbits, and frequency bands.

“While the polar regions often tend to be an overlooked part of the globe when it comes to satellite communications, NSR found that despite challenges from geography, limited populations and infrastructure, growth opportunities do exist in the polar regions, if you know where to look” said Alan Crisp, NSR analyst and report author.

According to NSR, Fixed Satellite Services (FSS) in C- and Ku-band together drive the highest transponder leasing revenues with more than $146 million in 2015, and are expected to continue showing growth to 2024. Today there is no dedicated supply in the Arctic, with most capacity coming as spillover from footprints covering Russia, Europe and North America. FSS fill rates here remain north of 80 percent, which the report cites as an indication of pent-up demand. NSR expects Low Earth Orbit High Throughput Satellite
(LEO-HTS) constellations will be able to address the technical challenges to bring higher broadband speeds for the first time to the more extreme regions of the Arctic and especially the Antarctic, though mainly as a secondary market.

“Though satellite operators are not actively launching capacity solely for the high risk polar regions, incorporating polar demand into a go-to-market strategy will increase [Return on Investment] ROI by targeting communities with traditionally high cost and poor service communications solutions, limited competition and by having a ‘first mover advantage’” added Crisp.