SES, Eutelsat, SpaceX, Mangata Networks, and Aalyria debated constellation viability, vertical integration, and the future competitive landscape at SATELLITE 2023.
Jonathan Hofeller of SpaceX said Starlink now has over 1 million subscribers serving consumer broadband, cruise ships, schools, hospitals, and aircraft. He credited speed of iteration: “Continuing to build excellent infrastructure is what we’re great at.” Eva Berneke of Eutelsat framed the macro opportunity: “Connectivity is here to stay. If we as an industry can get satellites out of this niche of being too expensive, we’re opening a totally different market.”
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Mangata Networks CEO Brian Holz said the real opportunity isn’t connectivity services per se but moving up the stack: 5G, 6G, and distributed cloud. He predicted providers can offer services at “25 cents per gigabyte per month” — competitive with fiber — and that in five years “the services side of the industry will be 20 times bigger than the satellite capacity side.”
SES CTO Ruy Pinto argued for multi-orbit differentiation, with cloud, edge computing, and connected industrial IoT as nascent markets. He expressed reservations about the long-term sustainability of massive LEO constellations.
Aalyria’s Barritt called for open standards and interoperability across the industry: “In times where there is attrition of resources and infrastructure it would make for a more resilient network if we could make dynamic use of each other’s unused space and ground stations opportunistically — but that requires common APIs and protocols.” VS
