Today's Greater Imperative: The Power of Satellite's Ubiquity

by Martin Jarrold

London, UK, January 2, 2021--From the beginning, with Arthur C. Clarke’s 1945 Wireless World article proposing that just three “geostationary” satellites would cover the entire surface of the Earth from their (relative to a point on the surface below) stationary positions, the idea of using satellites for communications was conceived to achieve global wireless connectivity. 

Since the advent of commercial satellite communications, the industry has striven to bring increasing capacity and capability to bear on achieving this global coverage. From broadcast, through to the first receive/transmit (Rx/Tx) networking, and then the internet; from GEOs, then from MEOs, and now from the emerging mega-LEOs, the objective has been to leverage the fact that satellite does indeed deliver communications everywhere – satellite is ubiquitous.

In the affairs of humankind throughout the satellite communications era this ubiquity has been of recurrent importance, but possibly not of as much importance as in the present circumstances, where a solution to pandemic disease is truly a solution only if it is ubiquitous. If this is a little abstruse, as engaging in ideas leadership can sometimes be, do bear with me and read on.

At time of writing (mid-December 2020) a year-long global public health crisis continues; yet, just recently, the development of various varieties of a vaccine gives us reasonable cause to look optimistically towards a near-term post-Covid-19 future. However, the governments and public health agencies of the world’s economically advanced nations have been less than exemplary in managing prevention of the spread, impact, and response to the pandemic, and this despite the advantage of massive financial resources and highly developed infrastructures. Unsurprisingly, many developing nations, with poorer finances and weaker infrastructures, have fared much worse, as they typically do in the face of any one of a number of recurrent disaster situations.

The United Nations online UN News on 16 December 2020 published details of a press briefing by the President of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), Mr Munir Akram, who said that equitable distribution of Covid-19 vaccines will represent an “acid test” for the international community, highlighting the importance of global cooperation in beating back the disease, and stressing that vaccines must be viewed as “a global public good” accessible to everyone, everywhere.  

The resources and capabilities of the satellite industry have always been positioned “front and center” in creating and providing solutions in humanitarian assistance and disaster response (HADR), as was evidenced earlier this year during the GVF-Satellite Evolution 2020 Webinar Series. As noted in my previous column in this publication, ‘The Evolving Role of Satellites in Disaster Response’ was a webinar theme explored by representatives of Eutelsat, Inmarsat, Thuraya, and Knight Sky, and moderated by GVF’s HADR Lead. Close to 8,000 individuals from at least 134 countries have watched this webinar series. So, the discussion of this topic can still be experienced through this GVF’s YouTube channel at https://gvf.org/webinars/.

The pandemic has taken the nature of the satellite HADR agenda beyond the usual list – drought, earthquakes, famine, floods, hurricanes,

Satellite technology can enable Telemedicine applications.

tsunamis, etc – of natural disaster situations. Whereas the scope of satellite’s HADR agenda has always encompassed within humanitarian programs a range of development issues related to agricultural and industrial economic development, education, health, infrastructure, etc., now to a far greater extent it encompasses the issue of global public health; an issue which has both acute/tactical (disaster) and chronic/strategic (development) aspects.

From early in the pandemic the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Covid-19 preparedness and response plans called 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.  Whilst government and other official authorities are prime actors in such preparedness plans, so, amongst other key industries, is telecommunications – and the satellite sector specifically features centrally in the provision of these capacities to prepare and respond.

During the first wave of Covid-19, GVF undertook a detailed review of satellite industry pandemic response initiatives, as covered in my earlier column in this publication in May 2020 – http://satellitemarkets.com/news-analysis/satellite-ecosystem-and-covid-19 – and also referenced in our webinar series in The Satellite Industry’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic (https://gvf.org/webinars/). Examples of the satellite industry’s response to the pandemic include:

• Keeping crisis economies functioning by maintaining efficient movement of raw materials, manufacturing components, and finished products, as sea-borne container cargo or transiting other stages in freight transportation logistics.
• Dissemination of knowledge and its application in telemedicine, and the promotion of enhanced hygiene practices and virus transmission prevention guidance. 
• Bringing emergency telecommunications to meet vital first responder needs where other communications technologies falter because bandwidth demand outpaces terrestrial capacity supply, or where such technologies are limited, absent, or damaged by disaster.
• Capacity-building for preparation and response, as illustrated in GVF’s being – along with some of its member companies – signatory to the United Nations Crisis Connectivity Charter and the private sector’s representative entity in the World Food Program administered Emergency Telecommunications Cluster.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has recently announced a global program to strengthen developing nations’ primary healthcare, to better equip such countries to prevent and respond to emergencies such as outbreaks of new and deadly disease. Additionally, on 12 December 2020, UN Secretary General, António Guterres, said the Covid-19 pandemic has revealed just how important it is for all countries to have strong health systems that provide the entire population with quality services when and where they need them, noting “This year’s pandemic has shown us that no one is safe until everyone is safe.” Or as I would put it, the solution (i.e., the vaccines) is really only a solution when it is, just like satellite, ubiquitous.

Coronavirus has illustrated what happens when the effort to address an emergency overstretches healthcare infrastructure and demonstrates the importance of preventing the spread of disease by providing healthcare education and information close to home, in the community. 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. Lack of health infrastructure integrity, and the absence of readily available public health information, disproportionately impacts marginalized and vulnerable populations. 

During the ECOSOC virtual press briefing noted above, plans were outlined for an examination of issues critical to post-pandemic recovery and achieving sustainable development through structural change and investment in sustainable infrastructure.

Rapid development of Covid-19 vaccines has shown how scientific innovation can work to a common goal. It can also be applied in efforts to achieve a sustainable future for all people, however, developing countries can be limited in accessing breakthrough technologies due to inadequate ICT infrastructure. 

Satellite already delivers on helping to achieve the SDGs but currently, according to Munir Akram at ECOSOC, the consequence of pandemic is that “Eighty per cent of the populations of developing countries today under lockdowns, they are in the dark. They are left behind. They have no ability to communicate, to conduct commerce, to conduct business, to be able to lead a normal life because they are isolated, virtually and physically.”

Mr. Akram further called for action to “digitalize” developing economies through improving internet connectivity and access. Satellite’s critical facilitating role in enabling the development of what has been defined in a UN Development Program (UNDP) and Environment Program (UNEP) paper as a global digital ecosystem has also been explored in Global Transitions: Digital Economy, Digital Infrastructure, Connected Communities, Digital Planet (https://gvf.org/webinars/), another in the GVF webinar series.

The marginalized and vulnerable, noted above, are the very populations to which Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Director, Telecommunication Development Bureau at the ITU, referred in a recent social media posting reflecting on the winding down of 2020 and resolutions for the New Year for renewed efforts to bridge the “digital divide”. Ms Bogdan-Martin wrote, “The #COVID crisis has made the case for #connectivity.” Adding, “…dramatically accelerating progress on every one of the Sustainable Development Goals (#SDGs) means making considerable headway to extend digital connectivity to the 3.7 billion still totally cut off from the online world.” The GVF webinar Serving Underserved Communities (https://gvf.org/webinars/) has examined this topic.

Despite the tremendous achievements in scientific research, development, and manufacture at Pfizer/Biontech, Oxford/AstraZeneca, Moderna, and other pharmaceutical organizations, the mere existence of one or more vaccines is, obviously, not enough. Reflecting on all the above, we must consider the role of satellite in, amongst other areas:

• Universal distribution of the vaccines and the tracking of transportation assets
• Communications for the augmented administration and functioning of vaccine delivery infrastructure and systems
• Information and training provision for ancillary and auxiliary medical staff
• Coordination between various domestic and international, government and NGO, clinical agencies
• And for the dissemination of accurate and truthful science-based information to counter fake and false information about the vaccines as solution to the pandemic disease

All this satellite can, and must, do.

If/when future zoonotic viruses – of which SARSCov2 is just the latest example – come to constitute a repeat threat to global public health, we must and will be even better prepared to leverage the capabilities of satellite. This preparedness to deal with such further instances of public health crisis – as acute, discrete, and separate events – will facilitate preparedness for other – chronic, systemic, and existential – threats to human societies, such as that posed by climate shift. Here too, satellite – not only communications, but Earth observation and other mass data gathering applications through technologies like IoT – plays a key role, building bodies and systems of knowledge, convertible into decision-making management “dashboards” to support development and execution of Actionable Intelligence.

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