The spate of new partnerships between terrestrial mobile operators and satellite platform providers continues amid growing urgency to plug coverage gaps for backhaul and primary connectivity. A burst of activity in part driven by the latest 3GPP NTN standards which have fostered collaborations between terrestrial and satellite operators.
Such partnerships between telcos and primarily LEO constellation providers also open up new use cases in IoT, such as logistics management and asset tracking. Both the GSA and GSMA, respectively representing mobile technology vendors and operators, have been counting and the numbers are accumulating fast.
The data is inevitably a few months old by the time it has been collated, with the GSA’s latest count dating back to the end of March 2024. As of then, the GSA identified 77 publicly announced partnerships between operators and satellite vendors across 43 countries and territories.
A total of 50 operators in 37 countries and territories had planned satellite services, with nine operators in nine countries and territories currently evaluating, testing or trialing these. There were 10 operators in 10 countries and territories that had launched commercial satellite services as a partnership, two more than at the time of the previous update in August 2023.
Since then, a few other such partnerships have been announced, including one in June between Argentine internet provider Orbith and satellite company Astranis. This partnership is different from many of the others newer ones in that it involves high orbiting geostationary (GEO) satellites, to provide remote connectivity to hospitals, schools, businesses, and consumers.
These services already existed, provided by Orbith over capacity leased from existing GEO players, but the Astranis deal provides dedicated capacity over smaller GEO satellites better placed to provide affordable and scalable interactive services.
In a related vein, Japan’s SoftBank unveiled a new partnership with Intelsat in September with the aim of establishing a global service using the latter’s GEO constellation.
This suggests recruiting terrestrial MNO partners outside Japan, given that the partners talk of a hybrid global service allowing devices to stay connected through seamless switching between terrestrial networks and the Intelsat GEO constellation.
Softbank has indicated this has become possible because of the latest 3GPP 5G NTN specifications, which allow existing satellite terminals to be recruited for such hybrid services in the short term before newer 5G-based terminals become available. The partners are at this stage targeting maritime and disaster response services, looking towards land-based mobile in the future.
The GSMA has similarly noted the importance of the latest 3GPP NTN standards in fomenting collaborations between terrestrial and satellite operators. It has reported growing industry-wide momentum over the last two years, underpinned by the integration of NTN in 5G New Radio in 3GPP Release 17.
This has been followed by further enhancements in Release 18 which have come on stream over the last few months. These are almost entirely focused on the needs of IoT services and associated devices which are often constrained in both computational capacity and battery life.
These enhancements include support for half duplex operation in FDD (Frequency Division Duplex) bands, which conserves power, and simplifies device design.
The point is that half duplex still allows two-way communication, but just one way at a time, so that only a single path has to be supported, which is a tradeoff reducing power and complexity when high speed simultaneous two-way connectivity is not required.
Release 18 has also brought enhanced mobility, with measurement protocols designed to prevent radio link failures and better support mobility for eMTC devices especially, building on the mobility enhancements from Release 17.
eMTC was one of the three primary use cases envisage for 5G at the outset for IoT applications that required a higher data rate and greater overall throughput than the very low usage sensor devices that occupy the bottom end of the IoT, often served by LPWAN protocols such as NB-IoT in the cellular realm.
RedCap then emerged as a bridge between LTE IoT protocols and 5G NR, while occupying the middle ground between 5G’s six overall target requirements, that is high peak data rate, ultra-low latency, coverage, reliability, power efficiency for long battery life, and low cost. Not all of these are required for all use cases, but RedCap was designed for those higher performing IoT applications where all six requirements may be relevant to some degree. Release 18 is optimized for these.
Release 18 also brings optimized GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) operation for further power efficiency, by enabling connections to be sustained for longer without requiring constant GNSS fixes, thus conserving battery life in IoT devices.
The point here is that 5G has more stringent timing requirements than 4G, partly because there is more TDD (Time Division Duplex) where there is greater risk of interference between neighboring base stations, and partly to support more advanced use cases such as industrial automation.
The fundamental technologies addressing these requirements come from the GNSS, such as time synchronization master, enabling global distribution of a timing reference. GNSS relies on satellites having a known time and orbit position, transmitting messages whose arrival are measured by the GNSS receiver.
The GSMA anticipates such enhancements stimulating growth in hybrid terrestrial/NTN services. The GSA noted that as of April 2024 there was only one telco/satellite partnership targeting the IoT and M2M (machine-to-machine) sectors specifically.
That was between Spain’s Sateliot and Telefonica through its Telefonica Tech and Telefonica Global Solutions (TGS) divisions, launching the world’s first global satellite-based service dedicated to the IoT in July 2023.
This was tested by providing satellite coverage extension to Telefonica’s cellular network through standard GSMA roaming, witnessed by the European Space Agency. This featured an implementation of Store and Forward, a two-step authentication method developed and patented by Sateliot, to support standard roaming with an MNO, adapted to the NTNs in low earth orbit.
IoT/M2M then is one of several sectors being targeted by these telco/satellite partnerships, and one at an early stage. Others include voice and data combined services, which have been available for some years over satellite phones and therefore well established, having been extended to other handheld devices.
The satellites relay the signal back to ground, where it is routed through the service provider’s terrestrial networks to reach the recipient of the call. These have been used for remote news gathering and for emergency cover in the event of disasters such as major earthquakes that temporarily disable terrestrial networks.
A third sector is defined by the GSA as Rural and Enterprise Broadband, rather a catchall category embracing both consumers and businesses in areas where terrestrial connectivity is either intermittent or nonexistent. This can include maritime settings. It is only really with the advent of LEO constellations that this has become a viable option capable of providing high-speed Internet access over satellite as well as terrestrial links.
It operates by transmitting signals between ground stations and one or more orbiting satellites. Satellite broadband is particularly useful in rural areas where terrestrial broadband infrastructure is limited and can also be used in mobile or maritime settings where traditional broadband is not feasible.
Then there is Satellite Mobile Backhaul, where signals are transmitted from cell towers to one or more orbiting satellites, which then relay the signals back to ground. The signals are then routed through the service provider’s network as usual to connect the mobile network to the core network.
This has emerged as a more cost effective medium for mobile backhaul in remote sparsely populated areas than running cables on the ground or deploying microwave.
The most active area currently is Direct-to-Device. Again, this is opening up almost entirely because of LEO satellite constellation deployments, allowing unmodified phones to connect via existing terrestrial spectrum and equipment.
This began with emergency SMS, promoted by Apple, as well as low bit rate two-way messaging, but it will extend to full broadband services as the constellations expand and mature. This is already providing ubiquitous coverage in previously underserved regions, especially in the US where Starlink has scored particularly on this count.
This is where the partnerships are coming in by allowing satellite service providers to offer access via terrestrial spectrum owned by the mobile operator, as opposed to dedicated satellite frequencies as in the past.
Three LEO constellations have been driving such partnerships so far, SpaceX with Starlink, AST SpaceMobile and Lynk. There are still partnerships between telcos and traditional satellite providers, in some cases with the emphasis on delivery of pay TV services more than broadband. Eutelsat has feet in both camps, with its GEO constellation and also having entered the LEO fray through its merger with the UK’s OneWeb in 2021.
According to the GSA, Starlink and Eutelsat lead the pack with 15 telco partnerships each, followed by SES on 10, then Lynk on 7, and Omnispace on five. Sateliot, Singapore’s Kacific and Greece’s Hellas Sat have one telco partnership each.