Market disruption and continued innovation were some of the main themes to come out of the Opening General Session Tuesday morning at SATELLITE 2017. Leaders of Eutelsat, Telesat, Inmarsat, Intelsat, and ViaSat converged to talk everything from reduced launch prices to new markets and the future for GEO-, MEO-, and LEO-based satellites.
“It isn’t about operating GEO satellites or LEO satellites; it’s about looking at technology to meet requirements,” said Dan Goldberg, CEO of Telesat.
Explore the Show Daily 2017 Day 3 Issue
Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
Stephen Spengler, CEO of Intelsat, spoke about the company’s recent merger with OneWeb, saying Intelsat’s intention was to leverage both LEO and GEO and that it planned to continue to invest in high-powered GEO satellites.
Eutelsat CEO Rodolphe Belmer stressed the importance of the industry’s ability to bring broadband to residential markets. “We feel we need to invest in GEO satellites, because that’s the only technology that can bring the level of capacity … to cost … and allow people to do what they want, which is to stream video,” he said.
Rupert Pearce, CEO of Inmarsat, called always-on communication a human right on par with the right to clean water. “We’re standing in an era where space communications is going to be more and more important and not just to our traditional customer base.”
Mark Dankberg, chairman and CEO of ViaSat, said: “We have way more demand than supply, and as we can drive down our cost and give people more performance per dollar, that market is going to go up.”
Spengler urged the satellite industry not to lose sight of the big picture. “Maybe the conversation changes in the future and we’re not talking about GEO and LEO … we’ll be talking about telecommunications.” VS
