From B2B to Starlink: How satellite group Hughes views the Brazilian market

The second largest satellite connectivity provider in Brazil, with around 30% market share, Hughes is increasing its focus on the corporate segment amid advances of companies like Starlink offering low-orbit (LEO) solutions.

Recently, Hughes do Brasil, a subsidiary of Hughes Network Systems, entered into a partnership with power company Eneva to provide connectivity to track and monitor up to 2,000 solar panels in isolated communities in the Amazon region.

In this interview, Rafael Guimarães, president of Hughes do Brasil, talks about these projects, the subsidiary's commercial strategies, competition on the B2C front and more.

BNamericas: How was the project in the north structured?

Guimarães: The project is primarily focused on rural electrification. Our client [Eneva] is bringing electricity to communities in the Amazon region, where, due to logistics, it's quite difficult to distribute electric power conventionally. It's very common for these communities to rely on diesel generators, which involves transporting fuel, maintenance, etc. It's a more expensive and more polluting source.

These communities will receive solar panels, power banks and solar inverters. The inverters, in particular, are essential for our client to be able to give some type of command, perform remote maintenance, have a view of the status of the batteries, etc. We are providing the connection so that, from their operations center, they can access this equipment.

We're using technology from an Israeli company, called HiSky, which allows IoT via satellite. It's a small piece of equipment, suitable for the type of challenge we had there of low-demand communication and the lowest possible energy consumption. 

The interesting thing is that this group of homes that we connected in the second phase of the project are floating ones. The HiSky solution has the additional benefit of enabling this mobility.

BNamericas: What is the status of the project in terms of homes, equipment, phases?

Guimarães: The first phase, in which we used conventional site equipment, served 1,400 points. This second phase covers around 400. The project involves almost 2,000 monitored and connected installations.

The expectation is that this business will continue. The demand for rural electrification in the Amazon region is immense.

BNamericas: How is Hughes expanding in the Brazilian market? What is the strategy, priority regions, segments?

Guimarães: We have been in Brazil since 1968. Since then, of course, we've undergone several changes in terms of market positioning. We started by selling satellite telecommunications equipment. 

Since the end of the 1990s, we've been selling equipment that the parent company manufactured and sent to Brazil. This was even before the privatization [of telcos] in 1997.

I joined the company in 1998. And we realized that this opportunity to sell infrastructure, the equipment itself, was going to end in Brazil. Because telecom operators were going to become professional and our connectivity customers, such as banks, realized that they didn't need to have the equipment in-house themselves. They needed to manage the network. 

They started selling this infrastructure to the operators while hiring their services. At that time, we pivoted our operations in the country.

BNamericas: To offer services?

Guimarães: We became a company, a telecommunications operator. Instead of selling equipment, now I'm going to package it, offer this equipment, hire satellite capacity and sell it as a service. I became an alternative for a bank that used to hire hardware and operate all on its own. This was the root of what we now call our enterprise business.

We made this pivot around 2003. Enterprise is now our B2B business focused on large companies and government. In B2B, today we basically sell to telecom operators, utilities, mainly electricity distribution companies, and government. These are the main verticals in enterprise.

In 2016, we decided to enter the B2C market. The company in the United States provided satellite broadband service to rural and remote areas. We decided to bring this business to Brazil, given the country's characteristics and needs in this area, and to sell satellite broadband to regions where the internet is poor or non-existent. 

Today, everyone talks about Starlink. We started doing this here in 2016. The same thing, with different technology.

BNamericas: What is the situation of these two verticals today?

Guimarães: The consumer business is doing well, it's stable. We currently have a base of around 170,000 subscribers, more or less, as shown in [regulator] Anatel's dashboards.

BNamericas: But the company's market share is falling, according to this data.

Guimarães: If you look at the last few months, the last six months, this base is practically stable. In fact, the market associates our decline with the entry of Starlink...

BNamericas: And that's not right?

Guimarães: No, it's not right. The impact they are having on us here is very small. Just compare the curves.

During the pandemic we sold like never before in history. There was a certain month in which we activated 20,000 subscribers.

We realized that we had to empty this network in some regions starting in 2022 or 2023, when we started to reduce the number of subscribers in a planned way. You can see that this reduction starts before Starlink even appears in Brazil.

[Editor's note: The company ended January 2025 with 170,400 accesses compared to around 174,000 at the end of October 2024. In January 2024, Hughes' base was 361,100 accesses. According to Anatel data, the base cleanup that Hughes refers to started in the second half of 2024.]

Does Starlink get some of our subscribers? Yes. But to a limited extent. We are positioned in a niche market that is still unable to buy Starlink services. [Starlink] is a business that, in general, is still expensive.

BNamericas: And how is B2B doing?

Guimarães: We're growing a lot in B2B. We've been growing double digits for three years in a row. 

We're entering segments adjacent to satellite that we didn't work in before. For example, SD-WAN networks, which basically involves connecting retailer stores, for example, using terrestrial broadband connections. You come in and orchestrate all of that for the client.

And another business we're starting to work in is private networks. We believe we're uniquely positioned here in Brazil to grow in this segment. 

Also, due to the fact that today Echostar [Hughes' parent] is a mobile operator in the United States through the Boost Mobile brand.

Many people still associate Echostar with satellite, but a large part of Echostar today is wireless networks, wireless 5G.

Also read Hughes aims for 30% of Brazil sales to come from private networks

BNamericas: What is Hughes Brazil's current revenue split between B2B and B2C?

Guimarães: Today it's more of a 50/50 split. B2B is growing faster, so it's catching up. 

Within B2B's strategy, the main avenues for growth are private networks, SD-WAN, and the heart of the company, which continues to be the satellite segment.

Five years ago, Hughes Brazil began positioning itself as a major integrator and orchestrator of solutions. Satellite is a component of a solution that I can use. In some solutions that I present to the market, I don't even use satellite.

BNamericas: LEO services have become popular. Do you think that you lost ground to these low-orbit technologies, or is there room for everyone?

Guimarães: Without a doubt, Starlink is capturing a lot of market share. It deserves its credit. The execution capacity is good, the service is very good, but we think there is room for everyone. We have a lot of GEO [higher geostationary orbit] capacity in Brazil and have been using it in the enterprise market.

Providing satellite broadband to a rural school, for example. Why not use GEO? "Ah, but LEO has much lower latency." Indeed, but what does that change in practice for that school? Does it really need to be LEO?

The same thing goes for projects with low traffic demand. Where, every now and then, the economic difference is the cost of the equipment, not the bandwidth. And that's where we have an advantage. GEO equipment is cheaper.

That said, we do believe in LEO. We currently have a global partnership with OneWeb. And we are open to discussing other partnerships.