Coming Out of the COVID Tunnel

by Robert Bell

 

New York City, NY, June 4, 2021--Depending on where you are in the world today, the light at the end of the tunnel is either welcome daylight or an oncoming train.  Since it first appeared in late 2019, COVID-19 has been an unequal opportunity curse, killing many, sickening more and leaving even more of us untouched but isolated and afraid.  Now that vaccines are pouring out of production facilities and into people’s arms, the inequality has actually grown, varying from nation to nation based on economic might, the capabilities of governments and national and regional culture.  

 

At this critical juncture, the World Teleport Association interviewed executives at teleport and satellite companies to learn how the pandemic impacted them and how they responded.   The result was a new report, Coming Out of COVID-19, full of lessons about dealing with the unexpected and unprecedented.

 

It told us some things we already knew: that satellite sectors from aviation and maritime to oil and gas and broadcasting were especially hard-hit, and that a lot of masking and sanitizing and working from home went on inside these companies.   The most interesting takeaways from the report – and a recent webinar we hosted – were the unexpected value that teleport and satellite operators gained from being forced to adapt to a global crisis.  

 

Unexpected Growth

 

The first value was growth in new lines of business.  Key vertical markets for satellite connectivity certainly cut back sharply as cruise ships went out of service, aircraft went into storage and network technicians stayed home. But there was unprecedented demand for bandwidth from new quarters.  A November 2020 report from HelpNetSecurity showed that multiple networks experienced a year’s worth of traffic growth – between 30 and 50 percent – within just a few weeks in March.  Telstra, which sponsored the report, saw a 70 GB jump in bandwidth demand just to serve schools in Australia.  Enterprise customers were on the phone asking for assurance that their allocated bandwidth would remain available despite rising demand.  One company was able to win several contracts from incumbents by demonstrating that it could operate leaner and meaner than they could.   

 

Several contributors predicted that the demand surge would not just be a blip.  The pandemic, combined with the massive growth in ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure, has sparked great interest in network diversity, particularly diversity over satellite, which effectively airgaps the network to keep it secure.   Technology plays its part as well, with the adoption of software-defined wide-area networks (SD-WAN) for managing multiple forms of connectivity including VSAT and L-Band.  This has significantly increased the ability of multi-mode networks to deliver a quality user experience.  

 

Been Down So Long, It Looks Like Up to Me

 

Other contributors noted that the large disrupters coming into the business – HTS, VHTS, MEO, LEO, video streaming and cloud computing – were already putting operators under major pressure to become as efficient and flexible as possible.  That came in handy when the pandemic made efficiency and flexibility into top-priority survival skills.  

 

The pandemic led many operators to cut administrative red tape, such as requiring multiple approval for certain work to be done.  That let employees respond to sudden bandwidth demand, or drastic changes in customer needs, within days instead of months.  Operators whose workloads were lagging in early 2020 took the opportunity to achieve new levels of product and process certification, including WTA’s Teleport Certification program. 

 

Remote Can Be Better

 

Perhaps the biggest surprises were in the power of remote operations to meet the need.  One operator with a big cruise business had made a decision months before COVID struck to standardize its network hubs and remotes on ST Engineering’s Newtec Dialog platform.  A major cruise line agreed to the upgrade and the company meticulously planned a swap-out for ships during their scheduled stays in port. 

 

As cruise passengers were ordered ashore, however, the careful plans went out the window.  Ships no longer had itineraries, so equipment could not be integrated and shipped on schedule.  Technicians could not board ships to do the installations.  Yet within a matter of months, the company was doing dozens and then hundreds of installations per quarter without cutting off the connectivity that officers and crew required. 

To make it work, the company began shipping unconfigured systems to ports without regard to schedule.  It developed training materials, both written and on video, to walk the cruise line’s onboard IT staff through the process of configuring Dialog and installing it on backup and then primary antennas, all without an outage.  The operator’s staff was online throughout to offer guidance and answer questions. The cruise line actually saved substantial money and time, and the operator’s eyes were opened to possibilities it had never considered before.  

 

Meanwhile, nearly every company was pleasantly surprised to find out how effective their employees could be from home.  While many set up A/B staffing and COVID protocols for their NOCs, others equipped their at-home staff with high-end laptops and software that made it possible to control the network and engage with customers remotely.  

 

Reliance on videoconferencing also had a democratizing effect across organizations.  Many of the intangible barriers separating executives from front-line workers melted away, and it became possible to efficiently hear from more voices in making key decisions.  People still complained about so many online meetings, but they tended to arrive more prepared than before and came away feeling sure they had not been left out of decision-making.  

 

As with everything else about the pandemic, the unexpected value was unequally distributed. But generally, the more agile and flexible operators proved themselves to be, the better they performed in the pandemic and the stronger they expect to emerge from it.           

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Robert Bell is Executive Director of the World Teleport Association, which represents the world’s most innovative teleport operators, carriers and technology providers in 46 nations.  He can be reached at rbell@worldteleport.org  

Coming Out of COVID is available for free to members and for sale to non-members at https://www.worldteleport.org/store/viewproduct.aspx?id=18216774