For three decades, satellite communications systems have played a key role in international and long-distance telecommunications services. This role, however, has been largely that of a support facility rather than a primary system. In the coming decade, the International Engineering Consortium predicts that new types of direct access satellite systems will be making a bid to play more significant roles.

Approximately a decade-long window of opportunity exists for direct-to-the-consumer satellite services to grow to a global scale and become players along with fiber-optic cable and wireless communication systems in a merged information market, according to the consortium’s new study, “Satellite Communications: The Transition to Mass-Consumer Markets, Technologies, and Systems.”