10,000 Viewers and Counting; Dubai, Singapore, DC Calling
by Martin Jarrold
London, UK, April 5, 2021--After the most recent webinar in the GVF-Satellite Evolution Group (SEG) series, ‘Satellite Networks Solutions: Development & Evolution of Capability & Performance’, attracted 328 registrations from 70 countries, we received the following comment from an audience member in the Czech Republic, “Thanks to GVF for this unique webinar series.” This was just one of many complimentary responses received over the 11-months since the series started. In another example of responses to the series we have people dialling-in all around the clock. Over the Zoom Chat function at the start of ‘Satellite Networks Solutions’ we received this message – “Hello, this is Timor-Leste. It is 12AM here.”
By May 2020 pandemic lockdowns and travel restrictions had come to necessitate that the satellite community gather only virtually. Meeting industry colleagues, partners, and customers had to be online, and in response GVF forged a new, regular and frequent series of connections in the Zoom ecosphere. The ‘Satellite Networks Solutions’ event brought the total of our webinar viewers to over 10,000 located in at least 141 countries.
GVF greatly appreciates the support of the diverse range of global audience members who have been joining us on Zoom since May last year. As at the date of writing the series has featured 24 broadcasts, including programs for third party virtual conference organizers and in association with satellite industry companies. A visit to https://gvf.org/webinars/ will reveal the complete video archive as well as details of future online events which will build on the success achieved so far.
This April and May will see us working with one of our members, Intelsat, to produce a series of three events focusing on Africa and EMENA, further information about which is available on the GVF website web pages, as above.
Reflecting the demand for coverage of more current satellite industry topics, and requests for further opportunities to sponsor events, the webinar series will continue for the forseeable future. In parallel, GVF will be contributing to the satellite industry ‘s in-person events which are now on the horizon. First in GVF’s calendar will be CABSAT 2021 which, billed as “Live, In Person”, brings the return of the SATEXPO Summit. GVF is a Knowledge Partner for the Summit and will host live moderated panel sessions during 24 & 25 May.
Three GVF-hosted SATEXPO panels are in preparation to provide GVF members, who are also exhibiting at the show, with the opportunity to have their representative serve as a panel member. Please note that the conference organizers are currently planning for the Summit to be an in-person event and the panel population is still subject to invitee acceptances.
The three panels will be themed across the market verticals Enterprise, Maritime, and Broadcast, as follows: ‘Reach, Reliable, Robust: The Essential “Rs” in Enterprise’; ‘Satellite and Maritime IoT and Cloud: The Digitalisation Imperative’; and ‘OTT Killing the Satellite Video Star?’, the latter title being with apologies to the British band, The Buggles. Their video of the synth-pop music track ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ was the first to feature on the MTV channel in the United States in 1981.
• ‘Reach, Reliable, Robust: The Essential “Rs” in Enterprise’… The rationale: Global or regional, metro, rural or remote, successful enterprise operations are built within an increasingly digitised global economy via networks that must be easily planned, deployed, operated and grown to meet the demands of scalability. Businesses with multiple sites must have connection irrespective of physical location and corporate networks must have reach and reliability, and be robust. Supporting this, satellite is key in bringing broadband services to enable secure private networking, cloud connectivity, and internet access. It provides enterprise with access to information and productivity tools, increasingly based in software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) intelligence to maximise bandwidth utilisation and applications performance. Extended provision of uniform levels of access to business critical applications across all company sites necessitates that organsations look to the latest innovations, such as expansion of MEO, deployments of LEO, and roll-out of satellite-supported 5G networks. This session will examine satellite’s vital role in enterprise, identifying the continuing opportunities for it to grow the enterprise environment.
• ‘Satellite and Maritime IoT and Cloud: The Digitalisation Imperative’… The rationale: Digitalisation, a transition evolving across the maritime sector and bringing wider fundamental change to the way shipping businesses operate is accelerating, enabled by deployment of broadband connectivity over Earth Stations in Motion (ESIMs) and high-throughput satellite fleets and constellations unlocking access to cloud and IoT services. One narrow example of the impact of satellite broadband connectivity at sea is the enabling of easier troubleshooting of faults in a ship’s onboard IT network, reducing the need for shipping companies to send IT staff to visit individual vessels to locally install new applications software or otherwise maintain onboard digital infrastructure.
With data and software hosted on the Web, digitisation processes are being implemented remotely, simplifying deployment, reducing costs, effecting consistency across fleets, and continual incremental upgrades. Adding to the digitising momentum has been the impact of Covid-19 which has increasingly necessitated that disparate elements of the geographically spread maritime industry work closely, yet remotely, to preserve supply chains through collaborative online platforms, video conferencing and remote data monitoring.
Deployment of latest generation of satellite communication systems is also the solution to earlier obstacles to IoT adoption – the inability to get data off ships in real-time. Cloud and IoT technologies, complemented by satellite broadband, are connecting an increasing number of control and sensor devices to enable real-time data telemetry covering fleet management, systems performance computing, cybersecurity applications, and more in terms of analytics, facilitation of informed insights and decision-making, cost savings, and demonstration of compliance with emissions regulations. The satellite digitalisation imperative is now a fixed feature of an industry that, pandemic-19 or not, constitutes the vital fabric of international commerce. This panel will explore how the digitalisation of martime communications is being enabled by satellite communications and the many benefits accruing to the maritime industry as a result of satellite-enabled digitalisation.
• ‘OTT Killing the Satellite Video Star?’… The rationale: Satellite has been the infrastructure sustaining media broadcast for decades and video has propelled growth in the satellite industry across those decades, either in direct-to-home (DTH) or video distribution to head-ends. The growth of non-linear video-on-demand (VOD) viewing, “over-the-top” (OTT) via inexpensive high-bandwidth broadband connections, was supposed to signal the demise of broadcast video. Has this proven true? Apparently, not.
Satellite operators are still signing and renewing contracts with major content broadcasters and satellite transponders for broadcast are still being launched. In light of the increasing populatiry of terrestrrial OTT, one can reasonably ask, “why”? The answer lies in satellite’s core value point-to-multipoint multicast economics that are based on a constant bandwidth cost regardless of the number of viewers within the same footprint. In short, satellite remains a highly cost-effective way to reach large numbers of people in an increasingly OTT world.
If satellite broadcast is not dead, then what role will satellites play as OTT proliferates? Benefitting the satellite proposition is the typical inconsistency of broadband networks, a factor applying even in countries with advanced telecoms infrastructures. Beyond urban concentrations coverage, reliability and speed can be a patchwork and not good enough to meet high levels of network demand for high definition formats. User experience expectation for HD, UHD and 4K services reinforces the satellite technology differentiator of being able to provide crystal-clear viewing without bandwidth limitations.
Consumption of higher quality video provides illustration of ummatched cost and efficiency advantages with satellite multicasting because when streaming such heavy content via unicast, with increasing concurrent views costs grow linearly. Thus, customer migration to UHD is of prime importance for satcom business as it leverages this economic advantage as well as its compression standards and advanced modulation schemes. OTT via satellite offers video platforms the cost benefit of multicasting and the ubiquitous coverage and high quality and reliability of satellite. This panel will explore how and why satellites will play a role as video is increasingly distributed over-the-top.
Looking further to the horizon, GVF will also contrribute panel content to both ConnecTechAsia 2021, 14-16 July, and SATELLITE 2021, 26-29 July. Details of these programs will feature in future columns here.
Meanwhile, wherever you are while reading these words… Keep well, stay safe.
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Martin Jarrold is Vice-President of International Program Development of GVF. He can be reached at: martin.jarold@gvf.org
