A Brussels ‘benefit day’ for the satellite industry

Subtitled ‘the challenge of bridging the broadband gap’ this 1-day conference turned out to be little more than a disguised benefit match on behalf of the satellite industry.

The parade of high-level speakers, EC officials, academics, consultants and diplomats orchestrated for this event (and the extent to which the true purpose of the agenda had been hidden) seemed to suggest that satellite operators might seriously imagine that government policies are unfairly stacked against them.

The reality, of course, is that their fortunes are related more to the adequacies of their technologies and the relatively small market scale for what is increasingly regarded as a barely basic level of broadband provision.

These brave high-altitude souls would not of course agree with that assessment. There is no doubt that in the very remote rural areas – the ‘hard-to–reach-places’ - the options for solutions other than fixed wireless or satellite are severely limited. And there is no doubt that the consumer equipment needed for satellite solutions is expensive and does not benefit from the economies of scale apparent in other technologies.

The determination of policy makers to ensure that those who live and work in remote places are not in anyway disadvantaged is, for some, stretching the notions of social cohesion too far.

And so the case for public subsidy for satellite enterprise is being made – as these operators would see it – in the cause of fair access to public sector funding that would otherwise default to the benefit of those who prefer fibre or even copper connectivity.

Their cause would have been far better served if the organisers had presented the case for satellite in the context of FTTH and DSL providers. The absence of these mainstream players seemed simply to expose the nakedness of their purported ‘gap bridging’ agenda.

The ‘gap’ to which they refer includes not simply the access availability gap but also the societal coverage gaps which currently mean that 10% of the population is increasingly ‘doubly disconnected’ – those unable or unwilling to use on-line services and those where services are simply not available at affordable rates. The former is largely a challenge for education and marketing; the latter is a matter of finding solutions that demand greater deployment imagination.

Most observers would agree that long-term broadband ‘future proofing’ is best secured by FTTH. Many would also agree that, with a level of imagination a little higher than that prevalent amongst incumbent Telco’s, the deployment costs can be drastically reduced and the coverage of these solutions greatly enlarged.

This, taken together with fixed wireless solutions, would, of course, further reduce the market opportunity for desperate solutions in desperate places.

In the UK we are fortunate in having the NextGen events programme offering a balanced agenda for a wide and diverse range of stakeholders.

But no matter. This day’s Brussels bash and its script-writers belonged to the satellite industry.   The disappointed delegates who would prefer a more adult consideration of Europe’s broadband challenges will soon find better opportunities for rational debate.

______________