Commercial In – Orbit Activity
Transponder agreement revenues for fixed satellite services (FSS) providers were $10.2 billion in 2008, up 6 percent from revenues of $9.6 billion in 2007 and maintaining a steady growth rate since 2004.
FSS giants Intelsat and SES account for nearly 34 percent of the on-orbit commercial FSS satellites, operating 50 and 38, respectively. Eutelsat, with 17 satellites, and Telesat, with 12, account for another 10 percent of the total.
Regional and other operators combine for more than 56 percent of the overall non-low-Earth orbit commercial communications satellites in orbit, increasing their share from 52 percent in 2007.
Satellite Broadband
Satellite broadband continues to show growth due largely to the success of WildBlue and Hughes in the United States as well as the steady growth of Thaicom’s IPStar initiative in Asia.
In the United States, both WildBlue and Hughes made steady progress in 2008. WildBlue added nearly 87,000 subscribers in 2008, while Hughes added more than 53,000 subscribers. With the U.S. government set to pump billions of dollars into providing better connectivity to rural areas, there could be further opportunities for the two operators to increase their subscriber numbers. In Asia, Thaicom continues to progress with IPStar. By the end of 2008, the operator had sold more than 150,000 user terminals, an increase of more than 50,000 compared to the end of 2007.
There also are more satellite broadband initiatives around the globe, with Eutelsat and ViaSat planning high-powered Ka-band satellites to tap into satellite broadband markets in Europe and the United States. SES Astra is seeing some success with Astra2Connect in Europe, and Avanti Communications also hopes to become a major player in Europe.
Commercial Launch Activity
After an unusually slow 2007 with only 10 missions to place commercial satellites in geostationary orbit, the launch industry rebounded in 2008 with 17 missions, as two of the largest launch providers returned to full service. This was the most missions conducted by the big three launch providers since 2002.
International Launch Services and Sea Launch were hobbled in 2007 by launch failures, but returned to the market with six and five missions in 2008, respectively. ILS placed Thor 5, AMC-14, Inmarsat-4 F3, Nimiq 4, Astra 1M and Ciel 2 into orbit. Sea Launch lofted Thuraya-3, DirecTV 11, Galaxy 18, EchoStar 11 and Galaxy 19 into orbit and also conducted the first mission with its Land Launch variant in 2008 carrying Amos 3.
Arianespace performed five missions in 2008, down from six in 2007. (This does not include a mission that carried the Automated Transfer Vehicle for the European Space Agency). Each Ariane 5 launch carried a pair of commercial satellites into orbit, and the manifest included: Hot Bird 9, W2M, Superbird-7, AMC-21, ProtoStar 1, BADR-6, Turksat 3A, Star One C2, Vinasat-1 and Skynet 5C.
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