The imminent market entry of several direct-to-device (D2D) LEO satellite constellations standardized to use telecom protocols by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), the global organization that develops the standards for terrestrial and non-terrestrial cellular communication, has sparked a wave of excitement around the world. In particular, these systems can play a huge role in the global south, serving to connect the roughly 3 billion currently unconnected people living and working outside of the coverage of terrestrial cellular networks.
But how can companies offering D2D LEO satellite services succeed in this new and very challenging market? It will prove particularly difficult, especially considering that, for the first time in history, this will truly merge terrestrial cellular and satellite services.Â
Although the major companies in this space will together cover a substantial part of the whole 5G service spectrum, their focus on competing with each other is hindering their ability to address the needs of enterprise clients for a complete and bundled 5G Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) service portfolio to provide seamless coverage extension of their TN connectivity solutions. This issue could keep companies from remaining competitive, especially if they miss out on business in new markets.Â
Several players have already made promising entries into this space, such as Sateliot and OQ Technology’s NB-IoT store-and-forward services for non-time critical IoT applications, Lynk’s message and low-speed data services and Starlink’s voice, SMS, and low-speed data services.
Also vying for a share of the market are SpaceMobile and OmniSpace, which are working in the 1-3 GHz band to provide voice, SMS and data services of up to 30Mbps directly to unmodified cellular equipment, and Amazon’s Project Kuiper, which will offer TN-like 5G services through its cellular base station terminal with speeds between 100Mbps and 16Gbps…
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