World Teleport Association (WTA) will be releasing the organization’s newest research report, The Teleport Business Model in a Software-Driven World, next week — the report will be free for WTA members and available for purchase by others.
Successful teleport operators are masters of the pivot: adapting their business models to the needs of changing markets. The bare-bones uplinks of the Eighties evolved into outsourced broadcast centers and providers of cruise and maritime services, business networks, secure military SATCOM and internet trunking.
Today, explosive growth in the space business is confronting the industry with its biggest pivot yet. Competition from Starlink is already driving down pricing for core transmission services, and three more LEO constellations will be launching service in the next three years. They will bring new demand for gateways but also challenge the economics and the core value-add of many teleport operations.
Meanwhile, as orbits multiply and satellites are increasingly software-defined, the demands on the ground segment for capacity, flexibility and seamless integration with terrestrial networks are overwhelming legacy analog technology. As technology vendors are rethinking their entire product lines to meet the new needs, teleport operators are being confronted with the need to rethink and renew their core value proposition, and to make strategic investments without investing too far ahead of market demand.
In this report, WTA invites teleport, satellite and technology decision-makers to share their forecasts for the industry, their identification of customer value and the moves they are making today to prepare for a new future.
