New Inmarsat satellite to shake up LatAm broadband market

UK satellite communications provider Inmarsat looks to up the ante in Latin America with its new Global Xpress satellite, with which it aims to ramp up data capacity, slash prices and appeal to a broader client base.

The US$1.6bn satellite was launched on Friday from Kazakhstan, and will transmit communications in the Ka-band, marking a strategic move by Inmarsat away from its traditional L-band to one with greater data capacity. The satellite will make a quantum leap in Inmarsat's data capacity from 500Kbps to 5Mbps upload, and 50Mbps download.

"Even on our current generation of satellites, we have more than 60% of our traffic as data nowadays. So data has taken over voice," Inmarsat COO Ruy Pinto told BNamericas.

The launch is the third of four satellites that will make up a fleet covering the earth. Global Xpress is the most relevant for Latin America because it covers the Americas. The fourth satellite due for launch by early next year will add redundancy and provide additional capacity.

CHEAPER BROADBAND

Conscious that competition has been increasing from other providers of geo-stationary satellite communications and from companies offering cheap backhaul from medium earth orbit satellites like OneWeb and O3b, Inmarsat has been pushing to bring down the cost per megabit and offering flat fee data packages.

Pinto believes that trends such as machine-to-machine and Internet of Things will drive business opportunities for the company. He calls the company's drive 'Internet of Everywhere,' as satellite communications can be used to connect sensors in remote locations and moving objects.

"I think our sweet spot will still be B2B and government B2G. But we're closely following the trends of those providing more capacity at lower prices per megabit," he said.

"IoT is almost in the past for us. If you want to track a container or use a smartphone in the desert or in the jungle or on a ship or plane or monitor a pipeline, we can do that. Though we don't intend to become a backhaul provider, we're getting close to that market."

GOING MOBILE

Inmarsat has traditionally differentiated itself from the competition by focusing on mobility by offering light weight handheld satellite devices.

Mobility has made Inmarsat popular with news media, the maritime and aviation industries and government agencies dealing with disaster zones, as well as the natural resources industries such as the oil and gas industry, which work in remote locations with unreliable communications.

"You can have logistics information for government, for security services or the armed forces. You can do container and cargo tracking. The beauty of our system is it's applicable across all the markets we serve," Pinto said.

The company is looking to other areas such as border security control and in-flight connectivity According to Pinto, the company is working with airplane manufacturers Airbus and Brazil's Embraer.

NATIONAL SECURITY

In the last few years, different Latin American countries have been launching their own satellites both telecommunications, mapping and national security purposes. According to Pinto, such projects are not a threat to Inmarsat's business in the region, but rather a complement.

"We would like to encourage governments to work with us for them to be interoperable. So when their terminals are out of range, they can use our system, which is global. It doesn't make economic sense for them to have global system," Pinto said.

The executive added that in light of all the concern about cybersecurity and espionage, satellite communications tend to be more secure than terrestrial ones.

"Space technology has advantages. You bypass terrestrial loops. There are less stopovers where you could be monitored."