I’ve followed with interest the development of DVB-RCS over the years, including some interesting work Intelsat and Cisco. Unfortunately, despite the claims in the linked article, DVB-RCS has not succeeded in establishing itself as a global standard. There are hundreds of thousands of vendor-proporietary satellite modems and little economic incentive for inter-operability.
As examples, Wildblue uses Viasat Sufbeam based on DOCSIS, HughesNet uses their own IPOS (Ku) and RSM-A (Spaceway). Eutelsat adopted Viasat’s Surfbeam for their Tooway system and SES Astra, the most ardent proponent of DVB-RCS outside of ESA, adopted Newtec proprietary modems in Astra2Connect service.
It’s hard to believe that ESA has the market power to successfully promote a DVB-RCS without a low cost, mass market modem ready to ship. This seems unlikely at best.
The unfortunate fact is that satellite market forces have created scant incentive for inter-operability while rewarding proprietary, incremental increases in bandwidth efficiency.
Some say that market forces are waning a Government-sponsored broadband network requiring open-standard equipment may now lead the way. Can you say JIPM.
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February 15th, 2009
jesse
Idea #1: Invite the private sector to innovate
Idea # 1,000,000: Include the (really) amateur community
“More than 60 satellites built in Europe, Asia and the Americas have in the last 18 months been lost in space with varying degrees of problems.”
That’s an astounding number and hard to believe – it represents a huge capital loss that’s not reflected in insurance rates. I just don’t believe it – seems like a case of shoddy reporting.
References:
Forecast International recently released their Space Systems Forecast – Satellites & Spacecraft report.
Summary:
- The communications satellite sector is doing well around the world.
- Manufacturing and services may migrate from US dominated to overseas.
- The global communications satellite market is expected to generate deliveries of nearly 300 satellites during the next 10 years.
- While demand for satellite services is growing, increasing satellite size, power and service life has decreased new spacecraft orders and demand.
- Roughly 218 geostationary and medium-Earth orbit satellites will be delivered during the next 10 years and valued at nearly $26 billion.
- The low-Earth orbiting market should see about 70 new satellites orders worth about $927 million, mostly fleet replacement within and Orbcomm.
- The U.S. share of the satellite manufacturing market has declined by almost 30 percent over the past three years (2004-2007).
- In 2004, 75 percent of commercial communications satellite orders went to three U.S. companies, while only three went to non-U.S. builders. That number dropped to 63 percent in 2005 and 40 percent last year.
My Comments:
The industry’s historical average is about 35 commercial launches per year.
The raw numbers from this report are less impressive but essentially mean that EADS and Alcatel are becoming more competitive and winning orders from non-US satellite operators (primarily national operators like Turksat, Arabsat, etc.).
This development is a result of earlier operator consolidation in the US (Intelsat + PanAmSat, SES + New Skies) and should continue to propagate consolidation through the US delivery chain.
I expect to see interesting spacecraft and launch tie-ups coming from Lockheed, Loral, Orbital, Boeing and Sea Launch in the near future.
References:
Space is not only the “Final Frontier,†but also a vitally important aerospace and defense asset. Prices in the commercial satellite industry are poised to rebound, keeping competition fierce and returning many firms to profitability.