A panel of maritime satellite service providers at the World Satellite Business Week in Paris discussed the growing impact of SpaceX’s Starlink constellation on the maritime satellite market.
Despina Theodosiou, co-CEO of Tototheo Global, said Starlink’s LEO constellation poses a growing challenge for legacy geostationary VSAT services. She noted that licensing and other obstacles had largely kept shipping operators from choosing LEO as their primary communications source, but this is changing.
“We’re seeing… large operators as well going for LEO as their primary and for VSAT as their secondary” backup service, she said.
KVH Industries CEO Brent Bruun highlighted the cost difference between LEO and geostationary services. A Starlink antenna costs $250, compared to the $25,000 price of a VSAT terminal a couple of years ago.
He said vessels can now get up to 200 megabits per second of service for about a dollar a gigabit, versus 20 Mbps on a typical VSAT for $10 per GB. This significantly boosts ship operations and crew morale by enabling video calls and other activities previously confined to land.
“No one saw this change coming as quickly as it did,” Bruun said. “This whole market has been turned upside down.”
While the panelists acknowledged the significance of geostationary networks for resiliency and applications where latency is not important, the demand for LEO connectivity is undeniable.
Thierry Polycarpe, vice president for global maritime at multi-orbit satellite operator Eutelsat, said his company has used its geostationary network to carry two terabits of data in a single day for ship-to-shore connectivity. “There is no doubt [LEO] is creating demand,” he said. “A tremendous amount of demand, coming from all parts of the market.”
However, he cautioned against getting bogged down in distinctions between geostationary and LEO services. “What is important to keep in mind is that we need to deliver performance. We need to deliver quality of service, and we need to deliver a good experience to the customer or to the end user,” he said.
The increased complexity created by the abundance of choice has led to a rise in demand for bundled products and network management services. Tototheo Global’s Theodosiou said overwhelmed shipowners have even been requesting IT management services alongside communications management.
Other service providers are also doubling down on their network management role. James Trevelyan, executive vice president of global sales at connectivity provider Speedcast, said his company has re-engineered its software to be more resilient and safe in today’s environment. “Software is really important because it’s all become more complicated, and so the software-defined nature of the network that we have built, and continue to build, is all centered around intelligence.”
In addition to more network flexibility, shipowners are increasingly demanding flexible price plans. “They don’t like the model of paying one price every month,” Theodosiou noted. “They want to pay-as-you-go or pay what they use.” This trend presents both challenges and opportunities for service providers.