The satellite and 5G communities have an ambivalent relationship. On the one hand, there are interesting developments which could integrate the two technologies far more effectively to boost overall capacity and coverage. On the other, the two groups remain at loggerheads over certain spectrum bands, traditionally occupied by satellite but now coveted for cellular. On the former side, a good example is the SaT5G project, launched in 2017 with funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program, with the goal of developing plug-and-play satcom systems for 5G in which the two technologies cooperate, and are orchestrated in the same virtual networks, to facilitate applications from backhaul to inflight connectivity to hyperdense video. On the latter front, the GSMA has fired…