Carving out a role in mobile satcom market

In many ways, Singapore sits in an enviable position in regards the rapidly growing aeronautical and maritime satellite communications segment. According to the MPA, Singapore counts some 5,000 shipping companies and maritime ancillary service providers that contribute about 7%, or S$25 billion, to Singapore's GDP and employ more than 170,000 people. Plus, no fewer than 130,000 ships call at Singapore each year.

On the aviation side, Singapore’s Changi Airport sees over 1,000 daily arrivals and departures serving about 54 million passengers a year. And in the Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) market, Singapore has captured approximately a quarter of the demand in the Asia-Pacific region, valued at about US$5 billion in 2013, supporting over 100 aviation and aerospace-related service companies.

In today's world, people's expectation is to be connected at all times and in all places. And the most challenging times and places to do this are either in the air or at sea. Further, connectivity at all times is not just a question of individual access to internet content for their work or pleasure. Ship operators and commercial airlines are seeing real cost savings in terms of operational efficiencies that are realizable thanks to global, on-the-go connectivity.

This expectation of connectivity "everywhere/anywhere" is driving a large increase in demand for commercial satellite communications services addressing the maritime and aeronautical sectors. Responding to this demand, the satellite industry is undertaking a major evolution in its ecosystem in order to cost effectively support mobility services that meet the needs and expectations of today's world.

Core to the development of the satcom mobility market is the emergence of High Throughput Satellite (HTS) architectures. Different from traditional widebeam satellites, HTS help drive greater efficiencies by employing large scale frequency reuse in multiple spot beams. While Singapore's own SingTel Satellite has yet to announce any HTS plans for the future, numerous global satellite operators will bring HTS capacity to the Asia-Pacific region by 2016.

Just as important to the evolving satellite ecosystem are the latest developments in compression, encoding, and modulation such as the DVB-S2 Extensions being introduced to the market. Further, new flat panel satellite antenna designs promise a very substantial change in the mobility, as well as numerous additional adjacent, satellite markets.

Finally, another core development in the evolving ecosystem relates to the improvements in satellite ground equipment, especially in the area of “open architectures” and “backwards compatibility” which combine to drive down the total cost of ownership (TCO) for end users of aero and maritime satcom services. Singapore does have a solid claim in the satellite ground segment through ST Electronics’ iDirect division.

While Singapore already has a solid position in the aeronautical and maritime satcom markets, it is a fair question to ask how the country can carve out an even larger role given the importance of the overall maritime and aviation sectors to its local economy.

Today, satcom mobility services likely generate between S$100 million and S$200 million in revenues for the local economy. This represents only ~0.1% of Singapore’s overall infocomm industry revenues of S$148.1 billion in 2013 according to the IDA.

One of the biggest challenges for Singapore in growing its local aero and maritime satcom business segment is that satcom is all too often seen as "special/different" and outside the sets of products and services for the traditional aero and maritime service providers. Instead, it is our view that they are and can be an essential, core element of these businesses.

While there exists a small cadre of niche and highly specialised Singapore-based satellite service providers in the segment today, there has been a great deal of misperception and misinformation among the larger maritime and aeronautical players in Singapore about the cost, reliability, and capabilities of mobile satcom services.

Our recommendation is that entities such as EDB’s OSTIn, MPA, or CAAS should take a more proactive approach in promoting, encouraging, or even mandating (for example flight or vessel tracking) take up of advanced satcom services within the industry. This would help drive the entire Singaporean industry base to fully integrate satcom solutions into their product sets keeping Singapore at the leading edge of the maritime and aeronautical markets that are so important to the country's industrial base.

Overall, Singapore is very well placed in the crossroads of the Asia-Pacific maritime and aviation industries. Given the very, very rapid growth in global connectivity, it is mainly a question of educating, beyond the few niche players in the know, the entirety of the aviation and maritime industrial base in Singapore of the rapid changes occurring in the mobile satcoms ecosystem. This in turn will maintain Singapore's leadership position in these two crucial sectors of its economy.

Patrick is among the speakers who will be sharing their expertise at Global Space & Technology Convention 2015.

Global Space & Technology Convention 2015
Singapore
11-13 February 2015

Click here for details.