During the event, Via Satellite’s Senior Editorial Director, Mark Holmes, sat down with SES’s CEO Adel Al-Saleh to take a deep dive into some of these innovations and challenges. Throughout their discussion, Al-Saleh explored a wide variety of topics, such as the competition in the satellite industry, the need for fast and agile R&D cycles, the fast-changing environment, as well as which markets are well-positioned for growth in the satellite space in the near future. Al-Saleh also talked about the partnership with Lynk Global that will address the high-growth direct-to-device (D2D) segment.

Debunking stereotypes
Holmes opened the session by asking how satellite operators and providers can keep pace with Starlink’s recent string of contract deals and wins. Al-Saleh answered by pointing out that all of the major satellite players are winning massive deals and contracts, but Starlink’s wins are more frequently covered by the market media and quickly amplified. “Yet, if you look at the performance of other companies, we can observe that often their business is growing. While Starlink is definitely doing a great job, I think we’re all winning our fair share of big deals. There is incredible demand in the market, and it’s growing,” reassured Al-Saleh.

Al-Saleh cited SES’s recent MEO Global Services (MGS) deal with NATO, the Luxembourg government, and the U.S. Department of Defense as a major win that exemplifies the growing demand for MEO services by the government and military. “It’s a big deal,” said Al-Saleh. “There are deals that are in the triple-digit millions.”

Al-Saleh encourages a closer look on the business performance of the big satellite players, that is generally signaling the industry success. “We’ve got to look at the performances of the businesses, they demonstrate that there’s plenty of demand in the marketplace,” explained Al-Saleh. “I think the narrative needs to shift a little bit more towards this. Especially if we do not talk about just one deal, but look at our performance consistently over multiple quarters.”

Acceleration on Innovation Cycles
One topic that came up during the discussion was whether SES will continue to work with traditional suppliers when investing in next-generation technologies for GEO satellites, or if the company would look for alternative approaches in how it invests in new technology.

Al-Saleh explained that the industry needs to move away from the waterfall development style and move towards becoming faster and more agile as it pertains to evolving satellite networks in an iterative way. “That means the supply chain needs to adapt and change,” he said. “I think there’s a willingness to change, but they’re challenged in doing it. So we’ll see over the next few years whether it’s evolved.”

Al-Saleh also believes that the current innovation and R&D cycles in the satellite industry must evolve: “When we think about starting a project, a particular constellation, or a big satellite, we start with a white piece of paper every time, and then it can take four or five years to introduce a new model. That is too long in our industry.”

SES’s goal is to introduce innovative, new space technologies regularly and fast. “Rather than waiting in a five-year cycle to get to another milestone and launch a constellation, we need to do it much more frequently,” he said. “It’s a challenge for the industry, that everybody understands and it will be interesting to see how it evolves.”

Markets Poised for Growth
As for the markets that are best positioned for satellite growth in the near future, Al-Saleh is placing his bets on the government and cruise industries. “The vertical government market is the largest and the most attractive market for satellite technology and operations,” he said. “And it will continue to be for the foreseeable future. I’m also very excited about the cruise business. It continues to grow, and there’s an insatiable appetite for more bandwidth in these big floating cities.”

Al-Saleh also believes that the automotive industry should not be counted out. “The automotive industry has put out its architecture for the connected car, and they have made it very clear that they will complement the terrestrial network in the cars with satellite networks. And with direct-to-device technologies, smaller terminals, and more powerful satellites – I think there’s more to come. Just watch that space.”

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Al-Saleh explained that international geopolitics have been the compelling forces behind the desire of world governments to achieve sovereignty of their space systems. “There are tensions and races to figure out who can control communications and who can have access to intelligence bifurcations of the world in different political systems,” Al-Saleh explained. “It’s becoming more and more challenging to figure out how do you become sovereign.”

Defense departments around the globe are currently facing significant, not seen before challenges due to the sophistication of kinetic and cyber-attack methods that could drastically impact the availability of their satellite networks. Al-Saleh pointed to the rise of complex cyberattacks as not only a threat to space sovereignty, but also a motivating factor for governments to attain sovereignty over their systems. “It’s harder to detect, and the nature of cybersecurity now is not just about prevention,” explained Al-Saleh. “It’s about how you react to them.”

Governments are now beginning to shift their focus on how they can protect their space assets and the critical data they transmit in a way that prioritizes sovereignty. For Al-Saleh, he views sovereignty in three distinct components.

The three types of sovereignty
The first is technology sovereignty, which – according to Al-Saleh – is rooted in the idea of having a proliferation of connectivity, communications, and networking paths. Sole reliance on a single technology stream can create an incredibly easy target for adversaries to take advantage of.

If a government or military’s primary source for comms or satellite connectivity is taken out through a cyber or jamming attack, it leaves them with no alternative source to fall back on in times of emergency. Having multiple sources and redundant streams for SATCOM can make an adversary’s target radius extremely small, making it more difficult for an attack to have a widespread effect.

The second component of true communication sovereignty, underlined by Al-Saleh, is operational sovereignty. This pertains to the idea that world governments and militaries should not be fully reliant on third parties to have a functional SATCOM architecture. “How do you make sure that you’re not dependent on somebody operating your infrastructure?” asked Al-Saleh. “You have to have control, to be able to access it, and to move from one contract to the other.”

The last dimension of Al-Saleh’s vision for sovereignty is rooted in data protection. Having assurance that a government’s data is secure, protected, and doesn’t get into the hands of adversaries is a driving force behind reaching a state of sovereignty over a nation’s space assets. “Ownership and control of all the data that you need, must be protected,” said Al-Saleh. “How do you do that in this fast-changing world?”

Partner to enable sovereignty and increase resiliency
Al-Saleh pointed to the PPP model as an important enabler to governments making their space sovereignty visions a reality. He cited numerous, successful collaborations between SES and governments as a sign that sovereignty is possible and within reach.

One partnership example that he highlighted was the collaboration between SES and the Luxembourg government which resulted in GovSat being established. Al-Saleh said, “GovSat is a secure SATCOM capability that is entirely dedicated to governments and institutions. We have a satellite and secure mission operations centre delivering a dedicated service using military bands. We also have dedicated gateways and terminals.”

He underlined that this blueprint can be replicated amongst other ally governments and militaries across the globe. “It’s set up so that the satellite connectivity solutions can be shared with other nations,” said Al-Saleh. “This particular solution can be accessed by NATO and Allied nations.”

MEO Global Services (MGS) is another example that Al-Saleh cited as a successful use case enabling space sovereignty. Through MGS, Luxembourg, the United States and NATO will be able to access SES’s latest SATCOM technology O3b mPOWER for defense and security and disaster recovery. “We’re able to offer services that are of the latest technology, jam-resistant, and feature flexibility and scalability. It is a revolutionary setup .”

To make partnerships work, Al-Saleh explained there are some key enablers that must be part of the process. “One is leveraging existing infrastructure,” said Al-Saleh. “There is a tendency to wish to build something new and something dedicated. And with the examples that I just used, there are highly efficient ways to leverage existing infrastructure and deliver the sovereign solution where the government customer has full control.”

It’s also important to make sure security requirements of the participating governments are met and that roles of each party involved – whether private or government sector – are clearly defined.

“When private sector brings innovation, and government supports it with investment, we create something that’s usable for governments and for commercial purposes across the world,” he said.

Finally, speed of execution is key. Faced with the geopolitical realities of today, Al-Saleh said that parties have to move faster to come up with the right solution. “As an industry where paradigms of satellite manufacturing and operations are constantly evolving, we must all embrace these disruptions to propose the right solution for governments. And together, we have to move fast, to stay ahead of disruption.”

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