Space Ground Segment

Overview

Ground segment transformation is vital for the wider technological development of satellite communications. This programme sizes the global space ground segment opportunity and assesses the capabilities that vendors will need to serve diverse and growing markets.

Our research assesses emerging innovations in space ground technology and provides strategic recommendations for stakeholders. Satellite operators and service providers must engage with developing trends such as virtualisation and orchestration to take advantage of growing network flexibility. Moreover, the propagation of telecoms standards within the satellite communications (satcom) market is growing the opportunity for terrestrial vendors to participate.

Themes

• Terminals. Covering trends in antenna and modem technologies. Flat-panel antennas will be essential to support multi-orbit connectivity and high-throughput mobility services. Modems need to evolve to meet future throughput and networking requirements.
• Network equipment and software. Advancements in baseband processing, software-defined networking and network management. Virtualised, orchestrated systems will deliver competitive advantage in resource utilisation and service provision.
• Industry standardisation. Progressive adoption of 3GPP and other standards will be another step towards an interoperable ecosystem of vendors and networks. Transition from proprietary hardware to adopting standard chipsets and orchestration software.

Questions answered

• What is the revenue opportunity for satcom ground infrastructure, across different applications, frequency bands, orbits and regions?
• How can equipment vendors thrive in an environment with increased presence of vertically integrated players and closed platforms?
• What are the technological requirements and standards that vendors should adopt to serve next-generation satellite networks and integrate with terrestrial partners?
• Which technologies and innovations should satellite operators implement to deliver services with efficient utilisation of resources?
• How could telecoms vendors use their existing capabilities for a competitive entrance into the satellite ground segment market?