SES CEO Adel Al-Saleh and Lynk CEO Ramu Potarazu. Photo: Brooke Bryand for Access Intelligence

Despite fierce competition for capital and increasingly divided world politics, the direct-to-device (D2D) connectivity market has something going for it: demand is booming.

SES CEO Adel Al-Saleh said in a fireside chat during SATShow Week on Tuesday that after conversations at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this month, he doesn’t see a saturation point in the D2D industry today.

“Every mobile operator told us, even the ones that just signed big agreements with Starlink or Amazon, are all saying, ‘When are you ready? Because we’d like to sign an agreement with you guys,’” Al-Saleh said.

Al-Saleh joined Lynk Global CEO Ramu Potarazu for a discussion of Lynk’s planned merger with Omnispace with SES as a major strategic shareholder. The two spoke on their companies’ multi-orbit connectivity approach, modernizing production models, and scaling their technology to meet demand.

Potarazu said SES, Lynk, and Omnispace plan to deliver connectivity to customers in mid-2027 and are launching satellites “right now,” without giving specific mission plans.

Al-Saleh said Lynk’s focus on low-cost, agile development separates it from competitors like Starlink and AST SpaceMobile. SES likes this approach because of its affordability, he said.

“We don’t believe that a consumer, at the end of the day, is going to be willing to pay $50 per month or $60 per month,” Al-Saleh said. “It will get to a point where it’s an incremental add to their bill in order to have this capability, so [it’s] unique technology that we believe is going to scale very, very quickly.”

SES will also provide the ground infrastructure for the D2D service, with the ability to route traffic from Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) to Medium-Earth Orbit (MEO), to the ground.

The merger’s other unique selling point, Al-Saleh said, is its spectrum rights — Omnispace brings access to globally coordinated S-band spectrum to the combination.

“Our strategy is to work with the MNOs. However, we need spectrum as well, independent of the MNOs, to provide the services that the MNOs really need,” Al Saleh said. “[The] combination of Lynk, Omnispace, SES, whether it’s in MSS spectrum or C-band spectrum or other spectrums gives us unique positioning in the marketplace.”

Potarazu emphasized the company’s customer base focuses mobile network operators, governments, and IoT service providers.

The discussion came one year after Al-Saleh announced SES’ investment in Lynk at SATELLITE 2025, seven months before the merger with Omnispace was announced. The merger has not yet been completed, but the partners said it’s awaiting final regulatory approval.

Potarazu said the merging companies are building their platform like software developers. As operators adapt to rapid change in the space industry, they will fail, iterate, and keep growing.

“It’s that whole agility and nimble process that’s important for us, because we’re building satellites that can work in any spectrum, any waveform, any frequency, and be moved very quickly as the market is moving, because the market is moving much faster than we’ve ever seen,” Potarazu said.

The current challenge to the venture’s D2D’s progress, Potarazu said, is finding launch vehicles. Al-Saleh added diverse regulatory environments and limited access to capital as obstacles. He noted that the merging companies compete with founders who have their own sources of funding.

Potarazu said that the combined Lynk/Omnispace company will have a manufacturing presence in the U.S., in Europe, and also in Asia.

“You have to be a global company with the political environment that’s out there, so I think that’s an important feature, and working with SES helps us get that global reach,” he said.