NSR: “Satellite backhaul a $25bn service”
May 13, 2021
Northern Sky Research (NSR) in its latest report on the wireless backhaul sector, says not only is it worth $25 billion by 2030, the sector is “just scratching the surface of this significantly addressable market”.
“Backhaul is one of the key growth engines for the Satcom Industry. A large portion of satellite capacity coming online in the next few years is purposely designed for Backhaul and, despite Covid-19, the segment continued to show major contract wins. But how big is the market, and for how long can this growth trajectory continue?” asks NSR Principal Analyst Lluc Palerm.
NSR says the emergence of High Throughput Satellites (HTS), evolution of ground segment and the push to connect rural areas with quality coverage transformed Backhaul from being a niche application to becoming one of the pillars for Satcom growth. “The industry is still in the early phases of growth. In fact, NSR’s Wireless Backhaul via Satellite, 15th Edition report estimates revenues to grow at 17.6 per cent CAGR in the next 10 years.”
NSR, in its study, suggests estimates of the total unserved addressable market for Satellite Backhaul at 22 Tb/s for 2020. “This figure will continue to grow in the coming years as end-users consume more bandwidth every year even when accounting for some downward pressure due to the expansion of terrestrial networks.”
“Comparing the addressable market with today’s Satellite Backhaul traffic at 224 Gb/s, it is fair to conclude that the industry is just scratching the surface of the opportunity, and there is still vast growth to be captured,” says Palerm.
NSR’s ‘bottom line’ conclusion is that Backhaul offers an extraordinary opportunity for growth with a total addressable market of 22 Tb/s. “At today’s supply levels (NSR’S GSCSD17 report estimates total HTS supply for 2020 was 2.7 Tb/s), the question is not if the Backhaul addressable market is big enough to generate growth, but how capable and willing is the satellite industry to set the conditions to activate this growth. Making satellite easier to adopt with seamless integration, offering infrastructure-as-a-Service, and generating positive-ROI business cases for MNOs to expand Broadband coverage will be key for unlocking growth.”