Intelsat overseen Intelsat for nearly six years and speaks with Via Satellite Associate Editor Mark Holmes about lessons learned during this time and what is next for the globe’s largest FSS operator.
VIA SATELLITE: How has your vision of the industry changed?
McGlade: I have learned a great deal over the last six years. Maybe it was blissful ignorance, but I always thought the government business would be the fastest growing, and that ended up being the case. But it wasn’t through any deep rooted knowledge of what the market would be. It was about how we were able to address a changing landscape for our government customers. We see a market that is large and a situation where it has been difficult for government customers to get capacity on time and on budget. It allows us to come in with firm, fixed pricing and offer cost-effective, flexible and timely solutions. We have seen this phenomenon really blossom over the last couple of years.
VIA SATELLITE: With interest growing in hosted payloads, what impact will they have on government business?
McGlade: We are optimistic that we will continue to see hosted payload opportunities. We have an FAA payload in the United States which is on Galaxy 15. We have the IRIS payload which is with Cisco. That was pretty groundbreaking. We continue to look at opportunities. Every time we launch a satellite, we look for the ability to do a hosted payload, because we are, by far, the most diversified of the FSS operators. Having 20 percent of our revenues from government services allows us to do things that I think others cannot do, so to get a good return for our investors and to be competitive for our customers, hosted payloads are key and allow us to be more cost-effective.
VIA SATELLITE: Which emerging markets excite you the most?
McGlade: What should be the most exciting market in the world is the Asia-Pacific region, however, there is a fragmented marketplace and so many operators there. Pricing is often compressed due to the nationalistic satellite operators that price very low, because they don’t have the fleet with the resilience and the ability that we have. Plus, there are barriers to entry in markets like China and India, which we hope will continue to improve. That should be the market with the most potential, but ultimately these other conditions have kept the growth down. Long term, we would like to see better growth out of that market.
Latin America has been our top performing region. Strong demand comes not only from our media customers, but network services well. We have to make sure with the new capacity we are putting in that we can continue to serve that region in a way that no-one else does. When we look at the content coming into Latin America from the United States, we bring in the vast majority of that content. We have ultimately the best position in Latin America. In the short term, in the Middle East, there is more demand than there is supply from government customers. We have done a lot to bring in capacity where it was needed. We have taken some capacity out of North America to reposition it in Southwest Asia and the Middle East to provide capacity for our government customers.
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