Panelists at Satellite Innovation in Mountain View, California. Screenshot via Satellite Innovation web platform.

As the direct-to-device space picked up steam in 2024 with demonstrations and new partnerships with mobile network operators and device manufacturers, the business model is still being worked out. 

Industry leaders from Iridium Communications, Skylo Technologies, Viasat, and Amazon Project Kuiper dug into the challenges with the direct-to-device rollout. 

As more and more satellite operators move to enable direct-to-device services, Iridium CTO Greg Pelton raised a warning. As the satellite industry partners more closely with the cellular industry, this could lead to a competitive market that looks more like the cellular industry, with fewer, less differentiated players. 

“If you look at what’s happened with cellular carriers, you tend to gravitate towards three to four operators in a market and competition is based on price and marketing. You get down to this level where it’s hard to differentiate,” Pelton said on Monday at Satellite Innovation, hosted by Satnews Events in Mountain View, California.  

“I do worry that the more the satellite industry adopts the cellular model, we’re going to see in the end two or three carriers that are operating at large scale, but with very low margins. That’s not a very happy place for any of us,” Pelton added. 

Iridium is working on a service called Iridium NTN Direct, a standards-based direct-to-device service. Iridium technology is slated to be included in 3GPP Release 19, paving the way for the company’s L-band frequencies to be accessible via industry standard chipsets.

Rich Pang, head of business development for Amazon Kuiper Government Solutions, said companies need to weigh how much to invest in this market — whether the investment is in order to sell a service or build something differentiated from what else is in the marketplace. 

Amazon’s first generation Project Kuiper satellites will not have direct-to-device capabilities, Pang confirmed, but Amazon is listening to customers as they ask to be connected in more places. 

“We have to answer our customers. They’re asking for this connectivity,” Pang said. “They’re asking for resilient capabilities, and they want us to be able to work with other systems as well. They’re getting tired of the proprietary systems that are out there today. We all have to figure out a better way of working toward standards.” 

Kevin Cohen, commercial director of direct-to-device for Viasat, said adoption of new devices that have 3GPP Release 17 chips is one of the biggest barriers to the rollout for direct-to-device services. He pointed to Google bringing satellite connectivity to the Pixel 9 as a positive development, and discussion that the upcoming Samsung Galaxy could have the same. 

Viasat has direct-to-device service available over the United States with 3GPP Release 17 chipsets. 

Manufacturers need to widely adopt these chipsets “to really drive the price down to get into mass market smartphones and mass market IoT devices so that it can be available for any consumer,” Cohen said. 

Vijay Krishnan, vice president of Strategic Partnerships for Skylo, said that minimizing friction with MNOs is critical for wider adoption. 

“We want to make sure a service can be provided by an MNO with their SIM card. A Skylo SIM card doesn’t need to exist,” Krishnan said. “In terms of SMS, we stand behind an MNO augmenting their capability. We’re not in the business of competing with them. That’s one way in which we think we can reduce the friction or tension that might exist.” 

Skylo does not operate its own satellites, but its technology optimizes satellite links to cellular devices across constellation types. Krishnan said the Google Pixel device is already on Skylo’s network and it signed a recent deal with Verizon which is looking at bringing Samsung devices onto the network as well. 

Bespoke implementations are not scalable, he added.

“If you’re going to do it where you have a bespoke, very unique implementation for each MNO based on their frequencies, then you’re talking about something which is inherently not scalable. The amount of effort and the resistance you’re going to face is huge,” he said. “If you have a global satellite network that can attach to any MNO at any time, that’s inherently scalable. I think there’s huge value in doing it that way.”

Beyond consumer phones, Krishnan is bullish about the opportunity here for automotive connectivity, specifically emergency use cases. He described it as a “third wave” beyond IoT and consumer phones.