Mobility and Throughput
Key to Unsettled Government & Military Satcom
Market
September 21, 2015
NSR’s newly released Government
and Military Satellite Communications, 12th
Edition report forecasts demand from global
government and military customers for satellite
communications continues to grow – but
challenges persist in terms of budgets,
proprietary versus commercial offerings, and how
new technologies fit into the Government and
Military users’ agenda. With more than 80
Gbps of HTS capacity demand, and more than $8
Billion in Retail Revenues by 2024, there
continues to remain bright spots of activity in
what looks to be an improving market in a
disputed spending environment.
“2018 will be an inflection point for military
mobility where a steady shift away from
traditional Land-centric applications towards
Maritime and Airborne applications will occur,”
states report co-author and Senior Analyst, Brad
Grady, “That shift comes not only as battlefield
strategies continue to become more mobile,
flexible, and rapidly deployable – but, as the
theatre of operations slowly shift to wider
conflict zones, and oceanic environments.”
“For Unmanned platforms, high data rate
applications like slow motion HD videos will
drive demand in HTS terminals towards the latter
part of the forecast. However, Ku-band
terminals are expected to retain the major share
of UAS in-service units until 2024,” stated
report co-author and NSR Analyst Prateep Basu.
Combined with GEO-HTS and L-band offerings, UAS
platforms will account for the majority of
retail revenue gain for managed services – more
than 30% of this $4 billion market over the next
ten years.
Beyond mobility applications, Fixed VSAT markets
have been particularly hard-hit, as terrestrial
options even in remote or austere environments
expand and forward deployed locations see
consolidation. Here again, HTS and
“military-friendly” frequencies such as
FSS/GEO-HTS Ka-band or FSS X-band will be bright
spots of growth. Likewise, narrowband
land-mobile applications for troop and vehicle
tracking, C2 applications, and otherwise
connecting disadvantaged end-users will be the
largest source of new In-service units over the
next ten years – fueled by the steady refresh
and replenishment of equipment coming back from
deployment.
As the market transitions towards HTS and
mobility, bulk leasing will continue to be
hard-hit and decline over the next ten years –
feeling the pressure from proprietary capacity,
budget cuts, intensifying price competition and
troop draw-downs. With emerging markets
leaning more towards a managed service model,
and increasingly strong talks in developed
markets, the commercial satellite services
value-chain will have a large role to play in
the Government and Military Markets over the
next ten years.
