Globalstar Receives
Terrestrial Authorization in Canada, Brazil and
Kenya
November 05, 2020
Globalstar, Inc. has
obtained terrestrial authorizations in Canada,
Brazil and Kenya. These three countries
represent an additional covered population of
300 million and 3.7 billion MHz-Pops, bringing
the Company’s total terrestrial authority to
over 9 billion MHz-Pops and coverage of a total
population of approximately 700 million.
Jay Monroe, Executive
Chairman of Globalstar, commented, “Since
completing the FCC licensing process for
terrestrial service in 2.4 GHz, we have pursued
a global initiative to obtain terrestrial
authorizations in a multitude of countries in
pursuit of commercial spectrum global
harmonization. We are very pleased that the hard
work of our team has culminated in this success
at roughly the same time across three
continents. Each of these countries is a
significant win for us because they represent
important developments for our regulatory
efforts – Kenya shows continued momentum in
Africa, Brazil has the largest population and
economy in South America and Canada is a step
forward to a harmonized North American
resource.”
Monroe continued, “There
are three components of our spectrum effort –
international regulatory, standardization and
commercialization. After the FCC process
concluded we immediately began working on the
3GPP standardization which led to Band 53. We
then moved our efforts to the 5G variant which
we completed known as Band n53. The
standardization of the band allows our partners
to add to the ecosystem of devices and
infrastructure available which in turn drives
regulatory momentum. All of this progress has
led to increasing commercial interest in the
band and we continue to receive significant
support from our growing list of partners.”
INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM AND
REGULATORY UPDATE
With licensing complete in
Canada, we continue to make progress in creating
a harmonized North America spectrum resource.
Mexico’s telecom regulator, IFT, also announced
recently that it granted Globalstar’s request to
include Band 53 spectrum on its official
regulatory agenda for terrestrial action during
2021, following similar proceedings recently
conducted by IFT for other S-Band satellite
spectrum. Once completed, Mexico would fully
unify Band 53 support throughout North America
and add another 1.5 billion MHz-Pops while
extending coverage to an incremental 130 million
POPs.
We remain active across
Europe and Africa working with numerous national
administrations to authorize Globalstar’s
services, including its terrestrial offering.
Botswana was the first such international
administration to do so. Botswana has been
followed by six other African nations – South
Africa, Namibia, Mozambique, Gabon, Rwanda, and,
now most recently, Kenya. These countries have
authorized Globalstar to provide terrestrial
services without any power limitations.
In Europe, Globalstar’s
request for Band 53 terrestrial service is
currently being considered as a formal technical
work item within CEPT, the pan-European telecom
coordination body. Globalstar’s work item is
supported by multiple European administrations.
Most recently, ARCEP, the French telecom
regulator, granted Globalstar a test license to
permit Band 53 demonstrations in Paris to
further support the technical work being
conducted at CEPT. The successful completion of
the CEPT study is a prerequisite for future
terrestrial licensing by European
administrations. Globalstar remains committed to
seeing this work through successfully.
TERRESTRIAL SPECTRUM
IMPLEMENTATION UPDATE
Kyle Pickens, Vice
President of Strategy at Globalstar and Partner
at Thermo Companies, said “The number of
opportunities we are currently pursuing for our
terrestrial spectrum and the support we are
receiving from international regulators and our
ecosystem partners are all moving in the right
direction. In the following paragraphs, we will
explain certain current target opportunities and
how the markets for Globalstar’s spectrum assets
are developing generally. These views are
enhanced by Thermo's current portfolio and
partners, including FiberLight, Lumen, Pivotal
Commware, Airspan, Recon and XCOM Labs. Nearly
all of the Thermo investments over recent years
are meant to directly help Globalstar maximize
its potential which has proven to be a helpful
strategy thus far.”
Globalstar passed an
important milestone recently when the New York
Power Authority announced they are trialing Band
53 in their new private wireless network. We
believe our spectrum is well-suited for their
applications and are hopeful that Band 53 will
ultimately be chosen within this new network.
The utility industry is a logical early adopter
of private wireless networks because they can
leverage their already substantial
infrastructure and require high levels of
security and reliability. In fact, today we are
being actively considered for a large-scale
utility project in the Southwest in which
Qualcomm provided helpful analysis for this
project. The utility is trying to consolidate
many disparate networks into a single private
network and believes Band 53 could be a valuable
resource.
Shipping, Logistics and
Mining are other industries pushing private
wireless networks, LTE now and 5G soon, in an
effort to reduce operating costs and improve
efficiencies. We announced last quarter that
Globalstar won a small West Coast port
deployment and are now pursuing a second port
opportunity where we expect a trial to begin in
the near-term. This opportunity is with a global
operator who is planning to deploy similar
networks, utilizing Nokia equipment, across
their operations in several countries. Only
Globalstar offers the potential for globally
harmonized spectrum for their purposes. We are
also working with additional logistics companies
planning to remotely control or fully automate
their equipment. It has been determined by these
companies that unlicensed spectrum is not a
reliable enough alternative and they need to
rely on licensed spectrum such as Band 53.
Mining operations are high value, but dangerous,
leading companies to pursue automation where
possible. This necessitates reliable, secure and
now more frequently, private wireless
connectivity. We are pursuing Band 53
deployments at mines in both the Western United
States and South Africa. These early private
wireless deployments help push the Band 53/n53
ecosystem forward and generate cash flow but,
importantly, do not foreclose the broader more
traditional spectrum deals which we are
pursuing.
In recent weeks several
announcements from the major technology
companies have highlighted the value of
Globalstar’s collection of spectrum assets. The
Amazon Sidewalk initiative made us return to
Qualcomm’s inside/out small cell analysis which
showed that with household penetration of just
20% in a neighborhood, 96% of data traffic could
be offloaded from the macro network. While a
carrier’s interest in this is fairly obvious,
other entrants could use this model for new
applications like security or other IoT
services. This analysis assumed a spectrum
resource very similar to ours and deployment at
lower power levels than the levels at which we
are authorized to operate. As compelling as
Qualcomm’s analysis is, it has yet to result in
significant deployments for several reasons.
First, this is a logical deployment for cable
companies who are already in most residences,
but their wireless ambitions have not fully
matured. Speculation is that they have remained
focused on Wi-Fi due to the lower equipment cost
and are currently pleased to leverage their MVNO
relationships. This paradigm may change soon
with expected CBRS deployments by cable
companies and lower cost 5G equipment driven by
ORAN initiatives. We also expect Pivotal
Commware’s new repeater technology to drive
greater competition for the home broadband
business from the wireless carriers with mmWave
spectrum like Verizon’s.
Brian Deutsch, CEO of
Pivotal Commware, said of Globalstar’s Band n53,
“Pivotal is focused on providing solutions that
enable operators to lower TCO and accelerate
time-to-market for mmWave 5G deployment, but our
breakthrough Holographic Beam Forming products
include offerings in Globalstar’s Band 53 and
C-band spectrum. Where fiber doesn’t make
economic sense to deploy, those with mmWave
spectrum and our smart repeaters are able to
reach those homes or enterprises and compete
favorably with cable. Pivotal is building a
US-based global technology company leveraging
leadership in mmWave, but we believe
Globalstar’s Band n53 offers a unique and
complementary resource and we look forward to
helping them commercialize this asset alongside
our products. This includes providing private
LTE/5G in homes and enterprises where Pivotal
deploys its mmWave network elements.”
Globalstar’s Band n53 with
new low-cost smart 5G nodes could offer any of
the fiber-rich mobile network operators, cable
companies or those utilizing new advanced Fixed
Wireless Networks the opportunity to leverage
their previous capex to build new 5G consumer
and enterprise networks from the “inside-out.” A
recent report from industry analyst Jonathan
Chaplin says that the cable companies and telcos
collectively reach approximately 80 million
households with fiber. AT&T, Verizon and Comcast
together reach just under 50 million households.
At an average of 2.5 people per household, they
are connected to approximately 125 million
people, or more than 1/3 of the entire US
population. Globalstar’s Band n53 could anchor a
new neighborhood and enterprise inside-out 5G
network, increasing the value created from the
significant embedded capital investment in fiber
for any or all of these companies. This could
either be done in partnership with one or more
of the existing wireless and fiber companies or
with a new disruptor with established consumer
relationships.
While Globalstar’s close
partner Airspan was an early leader in
economical small cell deployments through their
customers Sprint, Rakuten and Reliance Jio,
Nokia and Qualcomm also recently announced a new
Smart Node portfolio of All-In-One base stations
for 5G indoor use. The platform is designed to
deliver ubiquitous indoor 5G coverage for
residential and enterprise networks. As with
Airspan, these new 5G Smart Nodes are meant to
offer flexibility at an unmatched price point.
One obstacle to the
commercial deployment of densification of
networks with traditional small cells has been
that with increased density there are too many
overlapping cells and cell boundaries leading to
diminishing returns as the noise floor at the
cell edges increases. We are working closely
with the XCOM Labs team, founded by the former
leadership of Qualcomm, to implement innovative
technical solutions to these issues. They are
developing a Distributed Unit which addresses
these interference and related issues, resulting
in a material improvement in capacity from n53
(in certain environments as much as 5x-10x). We
are working closely with XCOM Labs on potential
deployments for Band n53 in dense small cell
environments where the increase in capacity is
most meaningful.
Paul Jacobs, Founder & CEO
of XCOM Labs said, “Future wireless networks
will be increasingly dense to provide the
capacity and latency required of 5G and
eventually 6G applications. Globalstar’s
spectrum resources, Band n53 now and potentially
C-Band later, offer XCOM Labs the opportunity to
roll out a global strategy with a significant
competitive advantage over our competition.”
In summary, Globalstar has
made progress in better positioning the spectrum
asset to be commercially available with great
partners that are at the cutting edge of
wireless technologies. They see value in the
resource and we obviously agree.