[Satellite News 10-07-10] Solaris Mobile, the joint venture between Eutelsat and SES Astra, is in discussions with potential service providers and may sign its first commercial deal in the next few weeks, Solaris Mobile CEO Steve Maine told Satellite News.
   “We have signed a heads of agreement with one service provider, which we are hoping to complete as a formal contract very soon, …  to actually launch a commercial service” in the next few weeks,” said Maine.
    Solaris Mobile has been struggling to establish a debut commercial deal that will be seen as validation for the company’s business strategy, according to Maine. “Progress in terms of gaining commercial deals has been slower than expected, as people have changed their views about broadcasting to mobile TV devices, for example. The market has changed significantly. We have put a number of offers of service to players in France, but we have not been successful in turning these into long-term contracts.”
    To make things even more difficult, Solaris Mobile’s W2A satellite, built as the base of the company’s services, has suffered technical issues and left Maine with limited capacity to offer potential customers. “The payload was originally designed to provide coverage over six spot beams. The anomaly on the antenna changed things significantly. All spot beams could be used, but because of the defocusing effect due to the anomaly, it reduced the amount of power that could be focused on our target markets. We have established, through a long series of tests, the best way of operating the damaged payload is effectively to focus power in two spot beams that optimizes the European land mass coverage and service availability. We can effectively focus on two services in two areas of Europe.”
    Solaris Mobile initially will use the two spot beams for demonstration purposes in France and to support the launch of a new network in Brussels. Maine said the company also is planning to launch a network using the satellite’s other beam in another European country in early 2011. “Effectively, we can support two services using the existing payload. At the moment it is being used for demonstration and pre-commercial services.”
    With the satellite having limited capability, a new satellite is seen as urgent for Solaris Mobile if it is to build a long-term sustainable. Maine is optimistic that an announcement could come soon. “I would hope we would be able to announce plans by early 2011. We do have a design specification for the new satellite, as technology has moved on since the initial design. Market conditions have also changed significantly, so we have had to look again at the parameters of the satellite as well as available technology issues. We have also looked at options about hosting or piggybacking on one or other of our shareholders planned satellites. The prospects for that are not yet absolutely clear, so we might have to look at a standalone satellite, the cost of which will be higher than a piggyback option.”
    Maine said that option would mean needing increased funding, which, in this difficult market, has motivated the company to initiate discussions with prospective service providers based around network establishment. “This development process allows us to liaise directly with potential customers to try to match the performance of that new capacity more precisely to their communications needs. We have been able to circle back with them and check the design criteria of the satellite against their potential requirements. One of the challenges for a start-up business like ours is that if you want to have space segment that is very flexible, you end up compromising on different elements.”
    As Solaris Mobile tries to shape the satellite to meet the needs of the market, Maine said the company has been trying to focus on a smaller number of applications. “We would remove some of flexibility of the satellite, but we can only do that if we narrow down some of the interest in the satellite from service providers. There is a closing loop of discussions going on.”