Yea or Nay to Consolidation
A recurring theme at satellite conferences and after-hours cocktail parties throughout the past few years has been consolidation. Almost every key satellite manufacturer has at one time or another been the target of rumor or innuendo. Company A is merging with Company B. Company C is getting ready to give up the ghost. Company D will never recover from its financial downturn.
As it turns out, the "Big Five" are still with us and comments to Via Satellite suggest that these stalwarts, along with Orbital and other contenders such as Mitsubishi, will remain in the game. Indeed, top satellite manufacturing business unit heads point to the operators, and say consolidation has happened there.
The current restructuring of the satellite operators, opines Alcatel Sourisse, offers new opportunities and a less fragmented market to the hardware providers. She also notes that the recent MOU announcing the merger of "space activities" of Alcatel and Italy's Finmeccanica is part of the more modest shakeout the satellite manufacturing side can expect.
Astrium's Bouvier likewise downplays consolidation. "Manufacturer consolidation has not occurred yet and no one can predict accurately how and when it will be done," he says. "The main players, those with the best assets, fundamentals and most powerful and motivated shareholders, will remain and emerge from the crisis with improved positions. With the current overcapacity, there is little room for newcomers in a market that is reluctant to review new, unproven offers and can rely on experienced satellite suppliers to maintain quality."
Sage Advice from the "Godfather"
As the global communications satellite industry enters the coming year, it is likely that at least a few old-timers will recall that 40 years ago, in April 1965, a fledgling Intelsat launched and then operated Early Bird. Built by Hughes, the predecessor parent of today's BSS, Early Bird--or Intelsat 1--was the world's first commercial geosynchronous communications satellite.
Other greybeards may even note that sci-fi great and futurist Sir Arthur C. Clarke first predicted both the orbit itself, known affectionately by many today as the Clarke Orbit, as well as communications satellites in a paper completed in May 1945 titled "The Space Station: Its Radio Applications." That paper subsequently was edited and Clarke's piece on "artificial moons" was published in the October 1945 edition of Wireless World magazine.
Sixty years later, the guru of global communications still sees an unending and flexible role for applications satellites in the worldwide connectivity infrastructure.
"There is no real technology threat to satellites on the horizon because even if or when a totally integrated and seamless terrestrial network is created, there will still be a requirement for independent redundancy and backup," Clarke told us from his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in October. "In addition, the unquenchable thirst for bandwidth makes all sources of supply relevant and attractive."
However, Clarke adds, "anything that makes satellites more efficient, economical and/or reliable should be implemented as soon as possible." On applications beyond communications, he says, "a whole new range of services related to security is coming online or is possible via satellite, including tracking of individuals, containers, ships, etc., monitoring every aspect of the environment, right down to specific species and even precise individuals, be they animal or plant." And beyond his fabled "artificial moons" for worldwide, two-way radio and television broadcasting, the role of weather satellites will gain in importance, he predicts.
But the big game still resides with the commercial Clarke Orbit communications towers in the sky. Sir Clarke says they will be with us forever, that there always will be underserved areas, new point-to-multipoint applications, increasing needs for independent and seamless redundancy and backup and an insatiable hunger for cost-effective bandwidth.
Or, as LMCSS's Ted Gavrilis puts it, "Let's face the facts. Satellites are here to stay!"
Scott Chase is a former editor of Via Satellite magazine. He can be reached at scottchase@verizon.net.
Email
Comments
Print
Reuse
