Satellite Operators Continue to Grow Capacity Leasing and Develop New Markets

Tuesday, August 7th, 2012
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Latest NSR Report Forecasts US$6.9 Billion in New Revenues by 2021

CAMBRIDGE, MA — Northern Sky Research (NSR)’s Global Assessment of Satellite Supply & Demand, 9th Edition report, released today, found that commercial satellite operators grew capacity leasing revenues by US$635 million between 2010 and 2011 and are aggressively targeting new markets such as mobility and other high value services in order to maintain sustained revenue expansion for the coming years.

“The Ku-band market will continue to be the main growth engine for the commercial satellite market for the coming ten years,” noted Patrick M. French, NSR Senior Analyst and the report author. “The direct-to-home (DTH) TV market alone could add US$1.4 billion in net new revenues by 2021 out of US$4.3 billion expected in total for the Ku-band segment. Solid Ku-band revenue gains are also expected from the video distribution, enterprise data, commercial mobility and gov/mil verticals.”

A major finding in the report is that the commercial satellite industry is finally beginning to fully grasp the significance of High Throughput Satellites (HTS) and their potential to drive new market growth in many other market verticals beyond satellite broadband access services. The report found that all HTS markets combined could add almost US$1.9 billion in net new revenues to the industry in the coming ten years, which is the second biggest gain after the Ku-band market.

“The widebeam Ka-band market, especially for the gov/mil segment in the Middle East, is also beginning to get some real traction for the industry even if total revenue growth is expected to be substantially smaller than the Ku-band or HTS side of the business,” added French. “There should also be continued strong growth in C-band video distribution services driven by expanding carriage of HD and SD channels, plus slow ramp up of 3D and eventually Ultra HD channels.” The only cloud NSR identified on the horizon was the potential for weakening C-band backhaul demand after 2015 should the industry begin to rapidly migrate to the use of HTS and O3b capacity for data-intensive 3G and 4G backhaul.

About the Report

The GASSD 9th Edition provides a wealth of data and analysis from the very top line global trends to highly detailed and granular assessments of supply and demand trends for eight separate applications in each of four different types of capacity (C-band, Ku-band, widebeam Ka-band, HTS) for twelve individual regions. Supplemented by nearly 450 tables and charts within the integral client Excel data sheets, the report provides the most comprehensive and detailed data and analysis available to the industry. Further, NSR has continually worked to improve the report and make the research within it more relevant and useful for the industry since its inception. NSR led the industry in introducing the assessment and forecasting of commercial services using High Throughput Satellite (HTS) capacity as well as being one of the first to make specific projections for growth in 3D channels within the video distribution and DTH markets.