The most important thing Qualcomm’s involvement with ICO and MSV tells us, is that mobile satellite services are to be taken seriously, not only in the US but globally. Or else why would Qualcomm want a head start in a technology it has always flirted with.
The deal announced this week amounts to Qualcomm adjusting its chips ‘ both CDMA baseband and its HSDPA ‘ so they work with two way communications from mobile satellite services, using L-Band or S-Band, along with existing mobile terrestrial bands.
The new Qualcomm chips will mean that handset vendors can take a standard component and bid for MSS contracts, and in some cases devices would have all the features and function of existing mobile handsets, at comparable prices. That will dramatically change the economics of the MSS services and prove what they have always said, that they can mix it with the grown up terrestrial mobile networks.
In the US there are at least three competing platforms for mobile satellite, ICO Global Communications, owned by a fund of Craig McCaw; Mobile Satellite Ventures owned by SkyTerra Communications and Terrestar controlled now by EchoStar. Other more established satellite companies such as Inmarsat, Iridium and GlobalStar are also partnering these new MSS players.
Both ICO and EchoStar are working with Alcatel to use its DVB-SH as a delivery mechanism for broadcast TV from the satellite, with ICO making it clear that it is going after the car seatback market with its MIM system, already launched.
The modulation for this is supported on a DVB-SH chip built by DiBcom, but because that is one way and a broadcast system, that doesn’t contradict the use of Qualcomm chips to handle any two way communications. The MSS geostationary satellites have the tough task of using huge 30 meter antenna to amplify a signal so that it can be picked up on earth, after a 22,000 journey, and the same antenna have to be able to pick up tiny earth signals from handset antennas, over the same distance.
In the Middle East this was first achieved in 2001 with the Thuraya satellite, which now covers multiple countries and offers dual mode handsets which mostly use GSM for terrestrial communication and a satellite version of GSM called GMR, created by Hughes, to speak directly to satellites. Both ICO and MSV will support GMR but their satellites can support multiple modulation and encoding schemes.
The handsets which worked with Thuraya initially had 6 inch antennas, then later tiny 1 inch snub end antennas. Now the new generation of satellites can reach embedded antennas. Qualcomm already has experience building this type of handset chip when it made a handset for the GlobalStar satellite.
While GlobalStar is different, with a network based on a constellation of 40 Low Earth Orbit satellites, far closer to the Earth than these new MSS systems, the signal strength that is received at the handset is comparable.
Previously satellite services, including Thuraya, have been very expensive and customers are measured in the 100s of thousands rather than in millions, and that has always hampered their growth. Their initial appeal has always been to parts of the world where ground coverage is not available or for emergency services which need to be able to operate when terrestrial networks are down, such as in Earthquakes and hurricanes.
But by lowering the handset cost of manufacture a number of things become possible. For instance terrestrial networks can roam off onto satellite coverage as part of their service, for customers living in remote rural areas. Those network might even choose not to build out in some rural areas, as long as locals had handsets which featured satellite connectivity, and then simply cut roaming deals with the MSS suppliers.
As we said mobile TV is another application that can either be used to add mobile TV services to handsets sold onto existing networks, but that wouldn’t benefit from using the Qualcomm chip, because in these cases it is only borrowing broadcast bandwidth from the satellite, not two way communication.
One of the biggest problems for the MSS suppliers is building out terrestrial transmitters using the same spectrum that is used to speak to the satellite. After years of lobbying, the FCC granted something called the Ancillary Terrestrial Component (ATC) which is the right to use the same spectrum along the ground as is used in connecting to the satellite. This gives far better in-building coverage in built up areas. The ATC is like any normal 3G or GSM network and connects back to either ground based switches where the phone being called is on another ATC, or the traffic is uplinked to the satellite using line of site 12 GHz spectrum, and then reaches the target through the satellite.
But the price of these build outs can be in $billions and the MSS operations will look for strategies where they either don’t have to built them out at all, or where they can be added piecemeal, as their revenues rise, picking off the richest cities first.
From Qualcomm’s point of view these types of satellites are taking off elsewhere and Europe is about to issue two licenses, using virtually the same S-Band spectrum (2.1 GHz) which will have Europe wide reach with around 15 MHz each. So working with two of the US MSS operators to get the chip technology right could give Qualcomm secondary markets in both Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
There is also the potential that WiMAX networks will team up with MSS suppliers, using very similar 2.5 GHz such as that used in the US by Clearwire. This would mean that a handset might connect to an immature and half built out WiMAX network when in range, but connect through an MSS service when out of range. So far Qualcomm has made no moves to support WiMAX in this way, but dual mode MSS WIMAX is a definite opportunity for other chip vendors or Qualcomm in the future.
‘This agreement marks a truly historic milestone in the evolution of the wireless industry,” remarked Alex Good, chairman, CEO and president of SkyTerra. “For the first time, satellite communications can achieve economies of scale traditionally enjoyed in the cellular marketplace today.
Combined with our powerful next-generation satellites, Qualcomm’s technology will enable mobile communications between terrestrial and satellite network layers using ordinary mobile devices.”
MSS operators still have many challenges ahead of them, specifically developing services where satellite propagation delays don’t matter (using the return path for data or control or reporting or SMS rather than voice).
Under the agreement, Qualcomm will develop its own satellite protocol, likely to be a variant of CDMA instead of the Hughes GMR, and include it in the firmware of select upcoming Qualcomm multi-mode baseband chips. However given that MSV has previously announced plans to use a technology from Nokia Siemens Networks called Internet-HSPA to provide an all-IP, flat network, it may also be a variant of 3GPP technologies such as wideband CDMA.
The new chips are expected to be available beginning in 2010. Qualcomm will sell and support its hybrid MSS terrestrial chipsets to mobile device vendors in the same manner it does today.