Economic and Technical Issues to Affect Short-term Consumer Broadband Satellite Market Growth

Communications Today, Nov 8, 2001

Short-term demand for consumer broadband satellite services will be slowed by economic and technical barriers, according to a research report released Wednesday by Northern Sky Research.

The report, entitled "Consumer Broadband Satellite Services: A Global Analysis of Key Players and Market Opportunities," provides a global analysis of the market and includes regional consumer demand and country-by-country vendor supply scenarios over the next 5 years. The report profiles key service providers and equipment manufacturers.

A separate report, entitled "Internet Service to Airlines: Will the Service Take Off?" forecasts Internet-to-airline usage and subscriber revenues via an in-depth bottom-up/top down methodology. That study assesses the chances of success by the industry and individual Internet to airline service providers.

"The current economic climate and limitations of first-generation two-way satellite technology will likely limit growth in the consumer broadband satellite sector for at least the next 12 months," said Christopher Baugh, principal analyst of Northern Sky Research. "Relatively high terminal and installation costs, in addition to limited bandwidth capabilities of current solutions, make the service addressable to only a subset of the global consumer sector today. However future Ka-band services have the potential to ignite growth by offering a faster performing service at a lower price point and bandwidth on par with terrestrial offerings." >TK