With an economic crisis have a severe impact on spending around the globe for nearly two years, we asked some of the industry’s top executives the following questions: “What will a tentative economic recovery taking hold around the globe mean to the satellite communications sector?”

ATCi
Gary Hatch / CEO

We have always felt no matter what the economic condition is we always have to provide a winning financial opportunity proposition to our customers.  This takes an in-depth and reflective view by understanding how they make money thus allowing our solutions to provide an essential answer to their requirements.  Today’s environment further requires intense scrutiny around essential purposes – everyone needs to make essential purchases, no one in today’s market can make non essential purchases.

AvL Technologies
Jim Oliver / President & CEO

Even with the natural growth of satellite communications, we saw the orders decrease during the economic downturn. Since improving communications is always a high priority with any organization or business, we expect the first money to be spent during the recovery to be on improving communications, a situation where satellite is often the choice.

Hughes
Arunas Slekys / VP Corporate Marketing & GM Russia/CIS Business

Clearly the satellite sector is bullish about the future as evidenced by the major investments initiated by numerous players during the economic downturn, including among others: Avanti for new Ka-band satellites in Europe; Iridium advancing its technology and fleet; Inmarsat expanding into multiple Ka-band mobile satellites; and not the least, Hughes for its next generation, 100Gbps+, Ka-band satellite, JUPITER™. Indeed, many of us in the broadband satellite world are fortunate to have posted continued positive results during the downturn and are well positioned to grow even faster as the global economy recovers.

iDirect
Mary Cotton / CEO

iDirect has experienced consistent growth in spite of a challenging economic climate as satellite communications has continued to be adopted in new markets. The use of satellite connectivity to support a growing number of applications has proven vital in so many different industries. We anticipate continued acceleration as the economy gains strength and requirements expand further.

MITEQ
Howard Hausman / President

MITEQ is a satellite equipment manufacturer. Many of our customers are established users that are continually upgrading their equipment to stay current with their customer’s needs. With a poor economy and uncertain future, equipment upgrades are put on hold, but as the economy improves expansion and upgrading plans start to roll out. Other customers have made commitments for new satellites before the economic turn down. These customers have to move forward with their infrastructure investment because of their large investment in satellites and launch services and have only a small window to delay their equipment purchases. The industry looks forward many years and needs more than a tentative economic recovery to return to long term health.

Satellite Engineering Group
Chris Childs / Satellite & Broadcast Sales Manager

This will make the competitive landscape even more competitive. It will be key to choose and build strong Vendor/Reseller relationships and partnerships during these interesting times. It will also be important to improve employee training and grow the knowledge base of your staff.

ViaSat Inc.
Mark Dankberg / Chairman & CEO

The most critical challenge facing satellite communications is to improve our value proposition in the context of a rapidly evolving terrestrial networking ecosystem. If we are too tentative in investing in new space capability and innovative technology because the near term appears soft then it will be much more difficult to stay relevant, let alone grow, when conditions improve.