If companies delivering services delivered via satellite technology want to expand both their customer base and the overall market, new actions are required.
Roughly speaking, "traditional satellite" shows up at Mobile World Congress (sometimes), Satellite show in Washington D.C., (most likely), CommuniAsia, (Because, Asia), and the PTC conference in Hawaii, and other shows that usually have "broadcast" and/or "telecom" in the title.
For "traditional" applications, such as broadcast and telecom, this makes sense, where you have relatively vertical markets and applications. There's nothing WRONG with that.
But what about Internet of Things (IoT)? Broadband?
Current applications of IoT fall into the enterprise space, typically with fleet monitoring, be it planes, trucks, ships, or containers. Why aren't companies trying the Enterprise Connects and IoT Evolution shows to reach the Fortune 1000 and resellers? What happens when IoT gets cheap enough for "consumer" mass-market applications?
Broadband is a multi-layered discussion. Existing geosync services suffer from three strikes: High latency of 500 milliseconds or more, cost per megabit, and bandwidth availability relative to terrestrial alternatives.
If a business or enterprise customer doesn't have terrestrial alternatives, or wants a diversified alternative to terrestrial, satellite is the only name of the game at the moment.
LEO clouds -- hundreds to thousands of low-flying satellites -- change the game in a big way, providing seamless global coverage, low-latency, and (if we believe Elon Musk's Tweets) performance akin or better than fiber. How price competitive LEO cloud broadband is when compared to terrestrial is an open question, but Musk has made noises of skimming off existing terrestrial customers.
How well LEO cloud takes up consumer broadband is an open question, but OneWeb and SpaceX have both made noise about serving the underserved/unserved around the globe. This suggests service pricing will be better than existing GEO services, along with offering better performance for real time applications.
If you want to play in the consumer tech arena, be it broadband or IoT, the place to be is via the CES shows put on by the Consumer Technology Association.
I don't expect traditional or New Space satellite companies to change practices overnight, but the forward thinking need to look beyond current comfort in order to raise awareness, build customer and VAR/reseller relationships, ultimately leading to an increase in customers and potential markets.
