New NSR Broadband Satellite Report Finds Pause in Growth before HTS Reignites Market

October 27, 2015

NSR’s 14th edition of the VSAT & Broadband Satellite Markets report, released today, forecasts the entire broadband satellite market to add 8.4 million new sites and generate $13.6 billion US in total revenue by 2024. With both Enterprise VSAT and Trunking/Backhaul remaining increasingly lucrative via HTS supply, North America will lead a two-thirds growth in Consumer Broadband Access.
 
“After several years of explosive growth in the Consumer Broadband segment, operators face slowdown due to congested beams in the developed markets and cost of CPE in developing ones,” stated Prashant Butani, NSR Senior Analyst and report co-author. “Even with these challenges, Broadband Access added over 300,000 net new subscribers in 2014. Capacity expansion through next generation HTS satellites will not only grow mature markets, but will also improve reach in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, with impact for the latter coming in the 2016 to 2018 timeframe.”
 
“Enterprise VSAT Networking experienced flat growth in 2014-15 with diverse challenges; however, in the medium to long-term, dynamics improve and over 750,000 new active sites are forecast in the next 10 years,” commented Lluc Palerm, NSR Analyst and report co-author. “Low commodity prices, currency fluctuations and poor economic conditions have slowed the deployment of enterprise networks in emerging economies, yet developed regions continue to face fierce competition from terrestrial alternatives. Macroeconomic difficulties are expected to ease, coinciding with new, competitively priced HTS capacity, creating a surge in demand starting from 2017.”
 
“While Satellite Trunking sites are projected to decline between 2014 and 2024, Backhaul will show steady growth for in-service units. More importantly, revenues will increase even faster given the new markets, HTS supply growth and technology shifts towards bandwidth hungry 3G and 4G sites,” commented Jose del Rosario, Research Director and report co-author.
 
NSR highlights important caveats for Non-GEO HTS constellations, but believes they have the potential to disrupt the market with backhaul and trunking already undergoing change. If the myriad technical, regulatory, and business challenges are met, NSR forecasts over 1.4 Tbps of demand for Non-GEO constellations across all broadband markets. The entrance of new players like Facebook’s internet.org, the current bandwidth pricing instability among satellite operators or the emergence of business models like aggregating demand through Wi-Fi hotspots or picocells ^together promise a very dynamic industry for the coming decade.