The Satellite Ecosystem and COVID-19

​London, UK, May 1, 2020--In starting to draft this column it was impossible not to be affected by the news that the official global figure for Covid-19 fatalities was approaching 250,000. The zoonotic – interspecies – jump to humans and subsequent pandemic spread of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has badly impacted many of the world’s most advanced and richest countries, but the epidemiology tells us that the worst of the impact, on the less-developed world, is still to come.

As infection takes hold in lower-income countries, affecting communities with weak health systems, affected by conflict, comprising displaced peoples, or which are permanent high-density slums, then it will, as never before, be seen just how vital to the integrity of modern human society the uniquely ubiquitous capabilities of satellite – for communications, Earth observation/remote sensing (EO), navigation, and meteorology – really are

The pandemic has highlighted the varied types of contribution and response that the satellite industry brings to crisis circumstances. Taking a very broad view, these responses are emerging from the context of satellite generally being more resilient than many other industries to economic downturn consequent on crisis. Demand for its services from many user market segments is holding up, in other segments it is elevated. However, some key user market segment demand suggests that parts of the industry are likely to fare badly.
Inevitably in the current circumstance, commercial and consumer demand for broadband connectivity remains strong, and will get stronger.

“Lockdown” restrictions have led to demand for telecom services to increase, underpinning telecommunications’ significance in enabling mass migration to home working, enabling people to stay in touch with friends and family, and to access streamed entertainment. Early reports across the telecom market overall indicate traffic increases ranging between 30 per cent and 70 percent for mobile broadband. Figures are even higher for fixed voice and broadband, ranging between 50 per cent and 100 percent.

While communications generally, Internet and entertainment access needs remain vital to a pandemic world, and demand for government services remain high, the established satellite operator part of the value chain, with certain important company exceptions, is cushioned from the most severe aspects of “lockdown”-related economic reversal. Occasional Use services are impacted by cancellation of sports and other large-scale events, but it is satellite operators with significant mobility business – most obviously those serving the maritime industry and commercial passenger airlines – that are among the most exposed. Space segment capacity demand will inevitably reflect reduced demand from the service providers which supply passenger cruise lines and reflect the forecast the 2020 reduction of 30 per cent in air passenger traffic.

A GVF survey of announcements by organizations across the satellite industry value chain reveals a focus on four common and importantly reassuring themes: employee safety and security, strategic business stability, customer service continuity, and supply chain maintenance. Specific details of these announcements will feature on the GVF website at www.gvf.org

Satellite technology is never more vital than now: The World Health Organization’s Covid-19 ‘Second Preparedness & Response Plan’ calls upon the international community to help with, amongst other things, countries building their capacities to prepare and respond, providing risk communication, coordination of the global supply chain, and acceleration in knowledge sharing and virtual inter-personal contact. While government and other official authorities are prime actors in such plans, so, among other key industrial sectors, is telecommunications – the satellite segment specifically.

Consider where satellite has an already demonstrated pedigree in capacity building for preparation and response. GVF, as the only globally-based representative body for the industry, is – along with a number of its member companies – signatory to the UN Crisis Connectivity Charter and is the only private sector representative entity in the World Food Program administered Emergency Telecommunications Cluster.

Deeply rooted and long-standing satellite industry support for development and deployment of capacity building resources in the form of GVF Training is another illustration. This is currently reinforced with provision for home-working personnel to undertake training certification. GVF Training resources remain operationally available 24/7 and whilst isolated or on furlough industry personnel can enhance their current productivity and prepare to resume on-site work when the pandemic resolves. GVF Training has introduced deferred course fee payment for a period of 90-days. With reference to continuing to serve the training needs of developing world-based industry personnel, the GVF’s Andrew Werth Developing Country 50 per cent discount remains available for eligible applicants.

Consider how satellite has historically brought emergency telecommunications to meet the vital needs of first responder organizations, as well as ensuring maintenance of business continuity connectivity where other communications technologies have fallen over as a direct result of disaster, or where sheer bandwidth demand – arising from circumstances like pandemic-imposed social distancing/working from home – outpaces terrestrial capacity supply, or indeed where such technologies have been very limited or uneven in geographical deployment in the first place.

Resource poor countries lacking strong information and healthcare systems are more vulnerable to pandemic. e-Health platforms are indispensable in connecting hospital professionals to medical applications such as e-training, patients’ e-medical records, virtual consultations, and video conferencing, immediately increasing the resilience of health service delivery systems.

Additionally, from the satellite operator community, is commitment to the ‘Covid-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan’. Joint efforts by members of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) – aggregating the Covid-19 strategies of WFP, WHO, IOM, UNDP, UNFPA, UN-Habitat, UNHCR, UNICEF, and various NGOs, complementing plans developed by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement – bring coordinated humanitarian response to 51 of the world’s poorest countries.

Consider the role of satellite communications in facilitating movements in the global supply chain of raw materials, manufacturing components, and finished products, whether on the high seas or other parts of the freight transportation logistics chain. An extremely important sub-set of this consideration is the welfare needs of crews – surely an example grouping of key workers – of the world’s maritime infrastructure. Plying the world’s oceans and connecting raw materials, component and finished goods suppliers with their industrial and consumer markets, ships crews are now, more than ever, remote from home and family, sometimes for longer periods than ever as crew change-overs are restricted by travel “lockdowns”.

Consider the contribution of satellite to networks that enable the dissemination of knowledge and its application around the globe, particularly, given the nature of the present crisis, in the fields of telemedicine, and extending to the promotion of enhanced hygiene practices and virus transmission prevention guidance. At other times, of course, the contribution of satellite extends more widely to cover the broader scope of e-Learning/distance education – helping towards the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and contributing to enabling the development of what has been defined in a UN Development Program (UNDP) and Environment Program (UNEP) paper as a global digital ecosystem. This is not only about communications satellites, but also navigation, remote sensing, and meteorological orbiting spacecraft.

From data to actionable intelligence: Epidemiology & social distancing dynamics: EO missions can be used to explore the effects of Covid-19. Health-related observation data dynamics are noted below, but, of course, there are the economic effects of “lockdown”. Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite mission is already providing key information on economic changes taking place resulting from limitations on work-related activity. Additionally, the European Space Agency (ESA) has issued a call for proposals to see how EO satellite data can be used to map changes around transport networks, commercial ports, and heavy industry. ESA is also launching a special call for remote sensing experts and machine learning scientists to submit ideas on how satellite data could mitigate the situation for industry, commerce, transport, and agriculture.

The European Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) Agency (GSA) is compiling a repository of apps that use GNSS as a knowledge bank of solutions being used to fight Covid-19. Aiming at providing a toolbox to help authorities, emergency services, citizens and app developers to understand what resources are currently available – and what needs remain unmet – the GSA is calling for already working apps to map the spread of coronavirus, to monitor incidences of Covid-19, alert users about possible risky contacts, and helping them to manage queues in supermarkets, pharmacies, and public spaces, and facilitating logistics for goods.

Recognizing that the satellite view can help epidemiologists understand the context of a coronavirus outbreak in a way other tools cannot, it also has the potential to help scientists predict when and where infectious disease outbreaks may occur, based on observing flows of people from one place to another, identifying possible ecological factors that may have led to pandemic through mechanisms enabling new zoonotic viruses, and possibly related to where human populations are encroaching on animal habitats. Environmental factors that play into outbreaks of diseases like Ebola have been seen, studied, and predicted, using data gathered from orbit. Additionally, AI is helping outbreak prediction by quickly analyzing the wealth of data beamed from orbit. 

“Tools for the job…”: A world in pandemic undoubtedly needs more than ever before a wide range of satellite-based technology, but it also needs a platform agnostic approach to securing essential connectivity for society and for economy.

Governments can best assist their populations in meeting their connected needs in a pandemic and post-Covid-19 world by facilitating market access to the most applicable and cost-effective solutions, via a wire, wireless, or a satellite connection. Imposition of requirements for extremely low latency – in the context of a crisis where the demands of video gamers are secondary, and the “business as usual” requirements of stock market financial institutions are far from the most fundamental of economic priorities – is impractical. The modest latency provided by satellite communications is perfectly acceptable and fully functional for the applications that are the priorities. Moreover, any decisions on questions of necessary financial subsidy to communications in a crisis should not be made based on distinctions amounting to tiny fractions of a second.

For satellite to play its necessary and vital part the industry must be guaranteed the spectrum which is needed to meet the increased needs of citizens of a now very different world. Such spectrum allocation requires little or no outlay of capital in the form of government subsidies or tax benefits to the satellite operators – certainly not on the scale of assistance now being sought from many governments by the wireline and wireless industries.

Martin Jarrold is Vice-President of International Program Development of GVF. He can be reached at: martin.jarold@gvf.org