What kind of development will satellite communication usher in?

In recent years, the global satellite communication industry has entered a stage of rapid development.

New technologies and new applications related to satellite communications continue to emerge, becoming a hot spot in media reports and attracting widespread public attention.

Especially in the past 2022, Apple released a mobile phone equipped with satellite communication technology, which caused a lot of excitement inside and outside the industry. People have speculated: Have we entered the era of satellite Internet in an all-round way? How will the rise of satellite communications change our lives?

Today’s article will give you a comprehensive interpretation.

The history of satellite communications

On October 4, 1957, the world’s first artificial earth satellite “Sputnik 1” was successfully launched, marking the official opening of the space age for mankind.

“Sputnik 1” has a strong Cold War background. During that special period, the superpowers launched artificial satellites, basically for military purposes.

Later, with the passage of time, the civilian value of satellites was gradually discovered. More and more commercial satellites have been sent into space for ground remote sensing, weather observation, broadcast communication and other purposes.

After entering the 1980s, the development of international commercial satellites entered a new climax. Rebroadcasting TV signals and forwarding communication messages through satellites has become a mainstream trend.

At that time, the famous American company Motorola proposed a great idea: to build a global satellite telephone network through a near-Earth constellation composed of 77 satellites, allowing users to make calls in any corner of the world.

That’s right, this idea is the famous Iridium project.

The Iridium program is the symbol of the first stage of human commercial satellite development. Restricted by the technical conditions and business model at the time, the plan eventually went bankrupt and failed, leaving a mess.

After entering the 21st century, another company has made a comeback. This time, they put forward a more rational development goal, clearly positioning themselves as a supplement to the ground communication system (rather than wanting to replace the base station like the Iridium project), providing network services specifically for users in places such as sea and remote areas .

This shift in positioning marks the second phase of commercial satellite development.

A representative company at this stage is O3b Networks, founded in 2007. They have found success by partnering with telecom operators to provide broadband satellite communications services to islands or ships.

It is worth mentioning that during the second stage of development, the functional positioning of satellite communications has also changed. It no longer only serves voice calls and TV signal broadcasts, but faces a larger market, that is-satellite Internet.

You can recall that around 2007 was the period when 3G and smart phones broke out in an all-round way. The vigorous development of the mobile Internet has affected satellite communications and allowed satellites to gradually serve the wide-area coverage and access of the Internet.

In 2015, Elon Musk officially proposed the Starlink project based on his own Space Exploration Technology Corporation (SpaceX). The project plans to launch 4,425 low-orbit satellites (later increased to 42,000) to provide high-speed broadband Internet services to customers around the world.

The launch of the Starlink project shocked the whole world, and also promoted the third stage of satellite communication, which is the era of low-orbit broadband satellite Internet.

The so-called low-orbit satellites are satellites that work in low-earth orbits 500-2000 kilometers above the ground. Although its coverage is not as good as high-orbit and medium-orbit satellites, it can compensate for coverage by increasing the number, providing greater capacity, lower latency, and higher network speed.

In addition to low orbit, there is another important technological trend in the third stage, which is the rise of High Throughput Satellite (HTS).

High-throughput satellites use higher communication frequency bands (such as Ku-band and Ka-band), more advanced satellite platforms, more transponders, and stronger antenna technologies, achieving a higher throughput than traditional satellites (low-throughput, 1- 2Gbps) more powerful communication bandwidth capabilities can bring users a better network experience.

All in all, it is precisely because of the technological leap of low-orbit satellites and high-throughput satellites that the rapid development of the global satellite communication industry has been established.

The application value of satellite communication

The reason why human beings want to develop satellite communication is because it does have unique technological advantages.

Satellites are in space, as the saying goes: “Stand tall, see far.” It utilizes limited space resources and can easily achieve wide-area signal coverage.

As we all know, after hundreds of years of construction and development, humans have established relatively developed ground communication networks (fiber optics, microwaves, mobile communications) on the earth, covering a large number of people. However, these networks are mainly concentrated in residential areas.

We usually say that the network coverage rate is very high, mainly referring to the population coverage rate, not the national land coverage rate.

In other words, on the vast surface of the earth, there are a large number of deep mountains, forests, deserts, grasslands, Gobi and other areas, there is no mobile phone signal, let alone optical fiber.

Therefore, we can make up for the shortcomings of traditional ground communication systems through satellite communications and achieve coverage of these remote areas.

Satellite communication can provide strong support for resource exploration, forest fire prevention, emergency rescue and disaster relief, adventure tourism, wildlife protection and other application scenarios, which can not only facilitate business development, but also ensure life safety.

For residents in economically underdeveloped areas, satellite communications provide fast and cheap Internet access, helping to boost the local economy and bridging the digital divide.

Over the years, satellite communication-based Internet of Things applications (such as asset management, geological disaster monitoring, etc.) have also developed well, and the market potential is huge.

In addition to land, there are two important application areas of satellite communication, namely, marine communication and airborne communication (aircraft communication). The demand for Internet connection in these areas is also very large, with a large number of high-value customers, and the return on investment is extremely high.

The industry prospect of satellite communication

It is precisely because satellite communication has broad application scenarios and huge commercial value that it has attracted many companies to join it.

In addition to the aforementioned Starlink, many companies have launched commercial satellite Internet projects. For example, Samsung’s space Internet project, Amazon’s Kuiper project, Telesat’s Telesat LEO project, etc.

In 2022, Apple and other mainstream mobile phone manufacturers will accelerate their embrace of the satellite communication field, which means that an emerging track belonging to “smartphone + satellite communication” has been paved. Subsequently, Qualcomm and Iridium aimed at the mobile phone direct-to-satellite market, applying satellite communication to Android phones. The technology, which will be available in the second half of this year, is expected to offer more features than the iPhone.

The industry generally believes that from 2023 to 2024, satellite communication may become the standard configuration of flagship mobile phones.