The satellite sector continues to enhance its offerings in order to both protect its traditional business strongholds and develop new revenue streams. To accomplish this, the satellite sector has improved its technology for delivering signals, but the problem seems to be that no matter how quickly they make advances, they are finding it difficult to keep pace with larger terrestrial competitors with more financial reserves.
    Various executives who spoke during the SATELLITE 2011 Pre-Conference touched on issues the satellite sector is facing in its efforts to both work with and compete against terrestrial communications players. SES World Skies CTO Alan Young feels that the sector has been focusing too much on improving the space segment side of the equation, noting that even if satellites were placed in orbit with advanced capabilities, those assets would be surpassed by terrestrial improvements many times over during the average 15-year lifespan of a communications satellite.
    The more favorable option to Young is for the satellites to feature fewer active components in orbit and serve solely as the pipe and refocus technology development on ground assets to improve the efficiency of bandwidth use and delivery.
    But even if the satellite sector improves its technology, some sectors, such as MSS, still face a nearly overwhelming financial disadvantage in their competition with terrestrial players. Some investment bankers feel that the MSS sector is not sustainable as a stand-alone industry and that the sector will eventually sell off its satellite and bandwidth resources to its much larger terrestrial competitors, which would like to acquire the ATC spectrum and don’t see cost as a major impediment.
As the satellite communications sector assess its current position and looks forward, an uphill battle looms. But those are the kind of situations that tend to bring out the best of the satellite sector.