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BRICS Countries Offer Sizable Satellite Capacity Opportunities

NSR’s New Country-Level Study Shows $325M in New Capacity Revenue Potential from Emerging Market Bloc

 November 19, 2014

In its inaugural emerging market country-level market study, BRICS Satellite Capacity Supply & Demand, NSR delves into the 5 countries (Brazil, Russia, China, India & South Africa) and focus on the satellite telecommunications elements of their rapidly expanding economies. The study paints a broad picture of total supply, demand, and revenues for satellite capacity in each market, with granular application-level and per-frequency-band details and highlights, while some of the fastest growing economies in the world, no two are alike. 

“Perhaps the most striking finding in this study is the impact HTS will have on these emerging markets, and the huge differences between markets. For instance, Brazil is aggressively developing a governmental HTS program deploying around 50 Gbps of supply, while China has made no mention whatsoever of HTS”, notes Blaine Curcio, NSR Senior Analyst and report co-author. “The supply picture for HTS differs markedly between markets, which will have a significant impact on the development of Ku-band for some key emerging applications. One example would be in-flight connectivity in China, which is forecasted to become a fairly large market. Without HTS, this will go Ku-band more or less by default”, adds Curcio.

Overall, the 5 BRICS economies combined will see traditional FSS demand grow by just under 600 TPEs to 2023, led almost exclusively by Ku-band. Beyond this, nearly 100 Gbps of HTS demand will be present in these 5 countries by 2023. Different countries will have vastly different application breakdowns, with India and Brazil seeing DTH dominate the market, while South Africa and China are seeing more demand from data-type applications.

Supply-wise, South Africa is something of an outlier among these countries. “Through a certain lens, South Africa would seem to be the most open due to its lack of a domestic satellite operator similar to an ISRO or even a Star One”, states Curcio. “That said, this could also be seen as a negative, since we do not see the latent demand that one would find in an India, for instance, due to insufficient supply from a protective governmentally-owned operator.