Satellites have provided critical connectivity services for decades. For example, geostationary (GEO) satellites have helped telecom operators deliver connectivity to remote populations for over 50 years — and they continue to play this vital role.
However, telecom operators often consider GEO a technology of last resort due to relatively high capacity costs, integration challenges that required specific satellite expertise, and its inability to support robust bandwidth requirements.
Today, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites have changed the paradigm, with their ability to easily integrate (plug and play) and deliver capacity rapidly at improved economics, low latency, and higher capacity, including multiple gigabytes per second in a single community or a site in the case of Telesat Lightspeed.
So, imagine the improved customer experiences and business value that can be created when LEO satellite operators and telecom companies work together.
“Telcos and mobile network operators face growth challenges and see satellite as an increasingly viable option for diversification,” according to a Northern Sky Research (NSR) report.
In addition to being able to expand and diversify their customer base, there is another significant benefit for telecom companies to work with LEO satellite operators: the ability to focus on their core offering and delivering un-matched customer experience to last-mile connectivity at homes, businesses, institutions and not having to worry about investing, building and maintaining a backhaul infrastructure.
Where to start
The NSR report recognizes that these partnerships will be “an ongoing journey” that requires work and collaboration. It suggests a few ways to cultivate the connections:
- Identify and start developing potential use cases. For example, telecom and satellite providers might find opportunities to collaborate on services for backhaul traffic, private networks, and bandwidth capacity for edge computing and Internet of Things deployments
- Seek commonalities that can smooth the network integration process. For example, the Telesat Lightspeed constellation is adopting the MEF 3.0 Carrier Ethernet service standards, which certify a compliant network that provides “dynamic, performance-enhanced, orchestrated, and high-speed connectivity.” With MEF certification, telecom operators can more easily understand the capabilities provided by Telesat Lightspeed and how these software-defined digital services can be procured and integrated into their networks. Because Telesat Lightspeed is designed to MEF standards, customers can take advantage of ubiquitous, high-capacity and low-latency connectivity, without the complexities inherent in integrating traditional satellite-based solutions.
Telesat is adopting additional capabilities that ease integration with our partners and enterprise customers. We recognize that organizations want easy, cloud-like connectivity experiences. To that end, we’re adopting the MEF Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) framework, which is a set of open standard application programming interfaces (APIs) that streamline and automate connectivity services. The framework addresses an IT architecture that enables end-to-end automation among multiple providers and networks.
The LSO framework helps us and our partners accelerate the delivery of digital services. Ultimately, it also enables us to improve our customers’ experiences – giving them robust performance and security with seamless connectivity.
Enterprise-class LEO is a win-win for telecom operators and satellite providers. It enables both to profitably expand network coverage through low-latency backhaul connectivity with fibre-like performance.
