The Latin American Capacity Roller Coaster

by NSR

Cambridge, Mass., February 7, 2011--The last decade has been a roller coaster ride in the Latin American FSS market with numerous peaks and valleys in both supply and demand. The decade started out with a mass of satellite launches that drove up supply, but transponder demand lagged leading to a buyer’s market with very low pricing. Then starting in about 2008, demand for capacity, most especially Ku-band transponders, grew very rapidly driven by DTH, video distribution and VSAT networking services for a plethora of rural connectivity, e-governance and USO projects. Little new supply was available at the time, and capacity pricing therefore went up and the tightness in the market in 2009 was evident. NSR estimates that regional average fill rates of commercialized supply were nearly at 80% in 2009 and much higher on the most popular satellites.