Forecast: Satellite broadband demand to boom
December 10, 2021
By Chris Forrester
Northern Sky Research (NSR) forecasts that there’s going to be a huge increase in satellite-based broadband demand over the next few years. NSR’s VSAT and Broadband Satellite Market, 20th Edition finds High Throughput Satellites (HTS), themselves a major market growth factor, moving the segment from 800 Gb/s in 2020 demand to 15 Tb/s in 2030, and values the growth to be worth cumulatively $135.3 billion over the next decade.
NSR says that there will be a “significant demand” in evolving Consumer Broadband and Social Inclusion could lead growth opportunities.
Retail/Hospitality and Banking segments witness challenges in North American and European regions due to terrestrial competition and market saturation, says NSR, while higher demand for upgrades remains in emerging regions. Capacity supply constraints also slow overall growth in the segment as the industry awaits upcoming capacity in LEO and GEO to capture opportunity.
“The industry is witnessing growing calls for increased bandwidth as end-users infuse digitization, multiple social inclusion programs add new sites, and demand for Value Added Services such as Cloud or SD-WAN increase,” notes report author Vivek Suresh Prasad. “These basic components lay the groundwork for a strong VSAT market in the long-term, though near-term challenges do continue to slow market the growth pace, with mixed trends visible across applications and regions. It will be of utmost importance for service providers to precisely balance pricing and cost, by offering innovative business models and capturing government subsidies. With a total addressable market of 448 million households, pricing is key to advancing capture rates for Consumer Broadband.”