Satellite’s Resilience Evolution | Challenging Markets, Robust Connections

In this second panel discussion, Alvaro Sanchez, CEO, Integrasys; Jack Buechler, VP Business Development & Product Management, Talia; and Nicholas “Donnie” Laughton, Manager Systems Operations LEO, Telesat; with GVF moderator David Meltzer, explored themes concerning satellite’s resilience in the face of a range of market challenges and robustness in its connectivity capabilities.

Whether it’s a question of rapidly evolving legacy and emergent user-market demand drivers, or of the responses of the satellite industry to these demand pressures, the satcoms industry is in dynamic flux and its resilience is being put to the test on different fronts. Customer/user-markets such as aeronautical, maritime, and military, are all exhibiting greater demands from their satellite connections, and the satellite industry is bringing elevated technology and service capabilities to the market in response. Users of satellite networks depend on the reliable and robust connectivity that is characteristic of today’s platforms, but there are potential vulnerabilities. This session will explore the current state-of-play in relation to two of those potential vulnerabilities. This session will explore satellite-based services to assess technical feasibility and commercial viability for diverse, current and future, vertical sector users of satellite. Interference is a vulnerability that the satellite industry has been successfully addressing through both technology advance and human capacity-building.

Questioning focused on satellite industry resilience to changes in, and challenges presented by, the end-user markets it serves, and what this means for the panellists, how this resilience is evolving and being put to the test in the face of newer markets and different challenges, and the aspects of those markets most preoccupy the panellists’ organisations in terms of ability to meet customer demand. In your analysis and from your perspective when you employ the descriptions of satellite communications as “reliable” and “robust”, what do you mean to convey with those terms? Given that “reliable” and “robust” can never mean invulnerable, what are the kinds of vulnerability that currently concern you? Is the vulnerability landscape changing? Assuming that this landscape is in dynamic flux, what evolving threats do you perceive as soon to present newer challenges? How are interference problems evolving, are present prevention and mitigation strategies enough, and what more can/needs to be done? Are there any particular features of the MENA market which present regionally specific issues relating to market challenges and connectivity/applications robustness?