VSAT and broadband satellite growth
December 18, 2012
NSR’s Broadband Satellite Markets, 11th Edition report has found that satellite broadband Internet access subscribers will exceed 5.2 million globally in 10 years, and the enterprise VSAT installed base will reach nearly 2.9 million sites. In addition, backhaul services and even IP trunking will make important strides as services shift to provisioning with HTS and O3b capacity.
“The launch of new high throughput satellites in North America finally began to impact the growth curve for satellite broadband Internet access services in 2012,” stated Patrick M. French, NSR Senior Analyst and the report author. “NSR expects that these services will prove their mettle in the coming 12 to 18 months in North America, and this should give the needed nudge to other regions like Western Europe and Latin America.”
Looking to enterprise VSAT, the report predicts that developing markets like Latin America and parts of Asia will have larger installed VSAT bases than mature markets like North America within a few years. “The impact of government social inclusion projects within the broadband VSAT market cannot be understated,” noted French. “Plus, not everything is broadband. Classic narrowband verticals like lottery and ATM networks have recently been highlights of the sector and are expected to show significant gains in the coming years.”
Beyond VSAT and broadband access, the backhaul and trunking markets will undergo a critical metamorphosis in the coming years. Traditional C- and Ku-band services become ever less cost effective as the data load at the 3G/4G backhaul sites exponentially increases. The satellite industry has a solution for this, and the migration to O3b and HTS provisioned backhaul sites is key to offering substantially more capacity at a much cheaper price. The same applies to IP trunking that will see increased bandwidth demand as it moves to O3b and even HTS-provisioned services despite a declining installed base of sites.