WTA… Ka-band’s Business Betterment (Report)

[SatNews] World Teleport Association has published a new white paper, Ka-Band and the Teleport, which examines how the coming wave of Ka-band satellite capacity may transform the business of companies that create and deliver services via satellite today.

More than $5 billion of Ka-band investment will be in orbit by 2014, offering vastly more bandwidth than the entire GEO arc does today. Ka-Band and the Teleport argues that it has the potential to create a revolution in satellite services, containing severe threats as well as potential opportunities for the existing players in the market. The white paper looks at the paradigm shift in satellite architecture that Ka-band carriers plan, how it may affect applications that currently use satellite, and its potential impact on the business models of teleport operators.

“Depending on how the business plans of the Ka-band operators work out,” says WTA Executive Director and report author Robert Bell, “the impact on the rest of the market could be fairly narrow. But Ka-band could eventually wind up becoming the default satellite technology, just as the broadband pipe into your home is rapidly becoming the default channel for data, voice and video today. Then how the Ka-band business develops will matter a lot to the rest of the market.” Based on interviews with senior executives of teleport, satellite and technology companies around the world, Ka-band and the Teleport surveys the range of possibility between the plans of Ka-band operators and the predictions of teleport executives. It offers advice on the likely future outcomes and how teleport operators should prepare today to protect their businesses and find opportunities tomorrow.