This will start as a technical post, but I will relate it to practical and commercial conclusions at the end. T-Mobile and Space-X announced a partnership to provide direct satellite-to-handset service using T-Mobile PCS frequency band. While this is new to Space-X, there are other players in the industry working on the same objective, primarily AST SpaceMobile and… Read More »
The direct satellite-to-device (DS2D) market is expected to reach $35 billion by 2030, and counting 400 million average monthly subscriptions driven by 5G technology (according to NSR). This is about $7/month. This highlights a very sensitive business case: constellations cost billions to deploy and operate; they need a refresh every 5-10 years. With much of the world’s unconnected… Read More »
Latency is a key differentiating parameter for new communication networks such as LEO satellite constellations and 5G. The interest in latency has increased as the value proposition for these networks hinges on enabling latency-dependent applications. This got some competing technology options nervous. For instance, LEO satellites provide as much as 20x round trip delay advantage over GEO satellites.… Read More »