From the newsletter (sign-up if you want it sooner): Telco integration is back in fashion (again), from satellite and terrestrial networks to private 5G and Wi-Fi. Mostly, it is an industrial story – but the same convergence is reshaping consumer connectivity, too, as satellite comes down to earth.
Something about integration and convergence today, mostly in industrial markets, maybe in consumer ones – and partly to recommend RCR’s forthcoming NTN Integration Forum on September 8, brought to you with VIAVI, which discusses how the NTN (satellite) markets get down to business. In fact, let’s start with the buzzy satellite sector because Europe has just accelerated its IRIS² initiative after the EC and the SpaceRISE consortium – led by SES, supported by Eutelsat and Hispasat – signed a revised schedule for a bigger constellation, bringing forward the phased launch of 330 LEO satellites and 18 MEO satellites to 2029. IRIS² is the EU’s sovereign satellite comms infrastructure project; the new agenda adds 66 higher-LEO satellites for defense, security, and emergency services. The result will be 60% “more secure governmental capacity” inside the EU, and 54% more worldwide, it says.
The logic – defense, security, emergency services – is that Europe’s sovereign satellite system will provide auxiliary critical services, rather than compete with terrestrial networks for mainline consumer and enterprise traffic. Those services will have to integrate with ground infrastructure and ground services, too – and 2029 is around the corner, but far-enough away that plenty-else will happen in the sector. Because satellite networks are red hot right now. Geopolitics has made sovereignty the only story in tech town, almost. And then there’s Starlink, in case you’ve been trapped under a heavy object: it said on last week’s earnings call that it might add small cells to its Starlink ground dishes – which no one quite believes, but few are prepared to dismiss outright (Musk being Musk). But the ambition is for a hybrid mobile network, combining satellite coverage with distributed terrestrial capacity.
On a call yesterday with Celona about converging private 5G and Wi-Fi (plus satellite and public 5G) for industrial usage – another age-old tale from the telco annals; for a story that half-ran today – it was striking how well the Starlink proposition has gone down as a backhaul link for private networks at remote or temporary industrial sites. “We are seeing it in mines, and also in new construction sites – especially with this data-center boom. We are seeing it in remote oil-and-gas, and early demand in ships and shipping terminals in the maritime sector… We’ve been surprised [at the backhaul capacity]. We are running remote oil and gas rigs with full voice and video comms over it, and it’s operated without glitches. I mean, I now look at whether the plane has Starlink before booking the flight.” Just the tonic for the richest man on the planet.
Starlink remains SpaceX’s largest (and only profitable) business, generating $4.3bn in revenue, up 66% year-on-year, with 1.7m net-new additions last quarter. It has a 13-fold bump in spectrum capacity (from 5 MHz, via telcos, to 70 MHz, including its own) thanks to 65 MHz of AWS 3/4 from EchoStar in late 2025, and is targeting a 10-fold jump in the number of its D2D satellites – which will combine, it says, to the point its mobile service is “100 times better” than it is today (by the end of 2027) and better, somehow, than the legacy telcos can offer (it says). But better at what? Connecting in a dead zone? Okay. Backhaul for a remote industrial site? Seems so. Coverage where the terrestrial tower economics get screwy? Could be. But none of that is the same as a better mobile service everywhere. For all the big talk about takeovers and such, these services will co-exist.
Analysts have already pointed to the awkward bits: link budgets, indoor penetration, spectrum availability, urban traffic density. Which is why the small-cell idea is more interesting, less revolutionary – to extend an orbital network. The satellite layer gets you over the hard bits; small cells might pick up capacity where demand is concentrated. But it is another hybrid network – and less like the death of the telco, and more like the same story this sector has told for years. Which is a story about integration, ultimately – to be discussed at the NTN Integration Forum: how the satellite, terrestrial, regulatory, and commercial pieces actually fit together, against the backdrop of geopolitical sovereignty and all that tech-bro Musk. Operators Kyivstar, Orange, and Verizon are among the speakers, joined by voices from across the ecosystem, including the FCC, Ofcom, Aerospace Corporation, Omnispace, Skylo, others.
