Podcast: Satellite Connectivity and Mission Critical IoT: An in-depth …

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the IoT Now podcast. I’m George Malim, the managing editor of IoT Now, and I’m delighted to welcome today’s guests. We have Mark O’Connell the general Manager for EMEA and APAC at Globalstar, and also Jim Morrish, the founding partner of Transforma Insights. It’s great that you’ve joined us here today to talk about satellite communications and specifically mission critical communications within IoT. I think that’s a particularly interesting area because of the sensitivity that mission critical communications have. So I find that a really interesting area to get into. Let’s set the scene by talking about some of the stories that we’re seeing about satellite communications in the press at the moment.

George Malim: Mark, turning to you first, I think you’ve got story that, uh, that you found was interesting.

Mark O’Connell: Yeah I found a story about China running A two year study on IoT and its roll-out trying to make it more available within their territory but think It [00:01:00] speaks to the global nature of mission critical communications and requirements for networks to be able to provide that on a global platform and for global customers. And I thought it’s a small little story, but I thought it was a timely story for our conversation today because it just reinforces the global nature of communications and the global nature of people who use communications.

George Malim: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, quite interesting to have a two year case study as well. It seems quite a long time frame given the pace of information, uh, a pace of innovation

Mark O’Connell: Correct, Yes!.

George Malim: Cool. I mean, I’ve seen some things that I think are really interesting about how satellite’s kind of entering the mainstream. Obviously we see, you know, Amazon, Leo and Starlink and those types of low Earth orbit companies coming in on a more consumer basis. And I think that’s gonna be very interesting. But I read an article in the Sunday Times over here in the UK over the weekend from Danny Fort, who’s based over in California, and he was saying that there’ll be more than a hundred thousand LEO satellites circulating by 2035. And, he quotes John McDonald, an astronomer at [00:02:00] the Harvard Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, who estimates we could see 20 satellites a day re-entering orbit in, you know, probably the 2035 or later timeframe. But, yeah. If you have any concerns about this level of space junk that the satellite industry might be creating?

Jim Morrish: I guess there might be a concern about the re-entry. Um, as those things, you know, as they drift down and basically vaporise in the upper atmosphere we’re putting some, what the upper atmosphere might regard as unusual chemicals in so it’s yet to be determined what the impact of that might be but these things are all choreographed. It’s amazing how they don’t hit each other. It just seems to work and it works around as a network. So, hopefully, that it continues in that way they don’t hit each other. Because that’s where you really get the space junk. Unless somebody decides to test some of their space weapons and blow up a satellite, which has happened in the not too distant past.

George Malim: Yeah, I should point out, of course, we’re not expecting 20 asteroids of full size, multi ton satellites that come and land [00:03:00] on London or anywhere else a day. Um, Because they will, as you said, vaporise, but it’s I guess the minerals and the metals and things like that that will be vaporised into the upper atmosphere that might have an ecological impact.

But anyway, that’s probably something for us to be talking. If we’re still alive in 20 years time. Um, so let’s turn our attention to the mission critical market, which, has always been a strong market for satellite because of the ubiquitous coverage and the resilience that satellite networks have, which simply aren’t there in alternatives such as cellular and other things like that.

I think a great way to frame the discussion would be to start by asking what does mission critical mean to you when it comes to communications? And I’ll put that to Mark first please.

Mark O’Connell: I think mission critical has a couple of different definitions and it depends on the ultimate user of the units. I mean at, at very top level. It’s to do with, you know, ensuring safety in natural occurring events such as storms, earthquakes and what have you for first responders to have appropriate and efficient and reliable communications in those events, and that is probably [00:04:00] what most people, if you ask them what is mission critical, they would think as first responders also within organisations, such as utility companies, local government, being able to provide infrastructure communications to loan workers in the field who are outside of GSM coverage is a key point for them and is a mission critical to be able to comply with their regulatory requirements, but also to be able to provide that sense of safety to their employees, that if there is an issue, when they’re, you know, going on a pole to prepare um, a line possibly in a storm, that they have an ability to get help immediately once they need it. It is keen enough, the mission critical for those organisations, okay. If I broaden that out, if I look at ranchers in America or station owners in Australia who have remote water tanks and remote troughs. They’re able to accurately monitor water levels and those is mission critical to them because they want to ensure that their livestock have adequate access to water to ensure that they survive and they grow and prosper. But [00:05:00] also it’s critical that if there’s an issue, they can identify that issue early on and send somebody out. Some of these ranches and stations are vast and, the cost of sending somebody out to correct an issue is huge. So being able to get that accurate information is very important to them. Similarly for farmers in Norway who use a collar from one of our partners, FindMy, which is enabled by our STX3 chip. It’s important for them to be able to get the sheep back in, in late September before the winter closes in, because, you know, they go out for the summertime, they graze in the mountains. Mission critical then means getting them back in at the end of the season, and you can look at those who transport hazardous waste, knowing where it is, and what the conditions are around it. One of our partners is heavily involved in that sphere. For them, the information comes from that is mission critical. So if you’re looking from AgTech to transport hazardous waste, to monitoring oil lines, the definition of mission critical depends really on the user and each user has their own [00:06:00] definition of that.

So when we

George Malim: Sure.

Mark O’Connell: at from, yeah, we look from our perspective, we look at as what does it mean to our customer? What does it mean to our partner’s customer?

George Malim: So we’re going from the value of one sheep to an individual farmer, to avoiding an oil slick in the Alaskan permafrost and all the penalty charges for that as a spectrum of criticality. But, I guess criticality is always in the eye of the beholder. Jim, what’s your kind of definition of mission critical?

Jim Morrish: Yeah, I think my views is very similar to Mark and I think you summarised it very well when you said criticality is in the eye of the beholder, I think when you first say to someone, “Hey, this is a mission critical solution,” they’re thinking loss of life, and its these like really extreme cases. But in reality, this is a commercial world. What is mission critical is defined by the person that’s buying the service and what really matters to them, and mission critical satellite is critical in situations that is really the only option. And if it doesn’t work, then all alternatives are really painful. And that’s, either a really painful way of finding some alternative [00:07:00] communication or losing the communication and that having knock on consequences. I mean, Mark was giving examples about monitoring pipelines, et cetera. If, the solution there fails, there’s potential painful consequences to that. So that’s when it’s critical that satellite comms work. It’s really about the perception in the mind of the person who’s buying it and what really matters to them, what their mission is, and enabling that mission. And as Mark says, that extends across multiple industries and contexts. You know, from defence and government, which might seem more naturally sort of mission critical and, and disaster management and emergency services and so on. But then onto things like critical infrastructure and Scada and systems in power stations and the pipelines that have been mentioned. You know, maritime offshore operations, remote environmental, agricultural monitoring, agricultural solutions. Finding horses, the grazing on the step in Asia, they could be distributed across a huge area to the person who owns those horses, knowing where they are and they could be anywhere within a thousand kilometres, really [00:08:00] matters.

So I think it’s in the eye of the holder, as you said.

George Malim: So moving on slightly, I mean, satellite always has this heritage of being a high quality, yet expensive option, and that preclude has precluded lots of use cases in the past and perhaps confined satellite only to use cases that can support the cost, via their business case.

So, yes, it’s fine if you’re saving a horse or a sheep. It’s well worth the cost of a tiny satellite asset tracking communication which you know, can easily be understood. However, if you are in a very large, massive IoT deployment, it’s probably not worth a non-essential sensor being able to ping across a hundred thousand devices when there are cheaper alternatives that cellular can support or something like that.

So, my next question is, what has been the biggest change in satellite technology that has taken it from being this kind of exclusive technology to support high-end use cases to a far more widely available technology with much greater applicability? So Mark, [00:09:00] what’s the biggest change that has kind of opened up satellite to a raft of new use cases?

Mark O’Connell: I think, you know, the cost of satellite has come down significantly over the years. If I look at the cost of manufacturing a satellite and launching it, those costs have come down significantly over the years. And that allows operators to pass that cost on to services in lower service fees to partners.

But I also look at the satellite devices that become smaller, more ruggedised, more power efficient, which means they can last longer in the field. If you look at most satellite deployments, this would go up for about 15 years and the product sets that are produced to work across them are rugged, long life, low cost of operation, low cost of ownership, and over the period of the lifetime of the asset, it produces a very good ROI for the customer and I think added to that, you know, from nothing but half perspective of the case, I look at addressive networks and the movement in 4G, 5G and 6G when it comes true and will come at some point in time, I assume, are all population coverage now. You [00:10:00] know, geo-terrestrial network will be population coverage networks. Satellites is now becoming much more operable in areas within and because of that we’re getting economies of scale because more units are being deployed, which means you manufacture more units with the cost of manufacture coming down the opportunity to scale from that. So I think they’re the kind of things that have brought a satellite to be more affordable for everybody, and not just maybe on the exception use case, but also on large scale rollouts where you know, they’re going to go beyond the, many of these cases go beyond cellular, so they’re going to need or terrestrial, they’re going to need to have a satellite component, and I think Leo provides that cost efficient, power efficient and reliable service for a price that makes sense.

George Malim: Great. I like that. I mean, I like the ecosystem maturity point as well because I think that makes the technology more widely applicable. Jim, what’s your view on democratisation of satellite connectivity but also the [00:11:00] hardware as well?

Jim Morrish: I tend to agree with the thoughts that those markets expressed there. I think we’re very much in a sweet spot at the moment, and it’s just kind of a sweet spot of a network effect almost. I better unpack that a bit. Um, so launch costs have come down, satellite costs have come down. So that side of the equation, you know, really it’s getting a lot cheaper. You know, those Leo constellations are becoming much more feasible. Meanwhile I think I’d emphasise non-terrestrial networks and the 3GPP initiative there. Now that hasn’t resulted in broadband connectivity yet, which is what it will ultimately do, but what it has done is it has illustrated some of the things that are possible, and it’s invigorated the markets, I think, to think what can be done with satellites, and we’ve also got some real examples. Mark, I’m sure you’re intimately familiar with Apple’s emergency SOS via satellite. Now, everyone’s heard of this. Um, you know, that is a handset to satellite solution and just having that solution out there, people realise that this kind of thing is [00:12:00] possible and they begin to look at satellites in a new way. You know, there are other US operators who are developing equivalent services.

I mean T-Mobile’s doing something, Verizon and AT&T as well. So it’s becoming real in an environment which people are just living day to day and folks are becoming aware of what can be done. Um, so what you’ve got is this kind of network effect. So things that have been possible for many years and decades, in fact suddenly have become a lot cheaper and people are much more aware of them, and between those two things, I think it’s really accelerating the market.

George Malim: Makes sense. So kind of multiple, multiple sources of momentum, I think driving things forward. Um, the other thing is, which we, I think we’ve all touched on during this conversation is the better integration between cellular and other technologies that creates a wider set of options for connected devices to utilise when they’re in deployment.

How is satellite in the mission critical world being used as a backup or failover to cellular networks? Jim, what’s your [00:13:00] view on satellite as part of a wider mix and specifically when it comes to mission critical, how does that integration of satellite with other technologies create that robust and resilient foundation regardless of technology to support mission critical communication.

Jim Morrish: Okay. Thank you. I, it’s an interesting question. I think you’ve touched a bit on the answer with the question in using the words

Speaker 10: Sorry.

Jim Morrish: backup, failover et cetera, and I think it’s worth emphasising that there is kind of a hierarchy here. If you have a device which could connect via a terrestrial network or a satellite network in most situations, most of the time probably preferably it’s going to connect via the terrestrial network. However, terrestrial network coverage is not ubiquitous. Within territories within the US you’ve got large blank areas, Australia, many other countries. There are areas which aren’t covered, and that is where satellites becomes critical, and even in reasonably densely there can be areas [00:14:00] which are not covered, and those can be the areas where the connectivity really matters.

So, for example, if you have a vehicle tracker or an equal solution and you have maybe 95% coverage as you might have in many European countries, and if the car breaks down or there’s an accident in that 5% that isn’t covered, that’s when it really matters, which kind of brings you back to the criticality aspect, and satellite picks that up. So what you’ve effectively got is filling in the not spots of terrestrial network providing, you know, a ubiquitous fallback in case there’s a problem with the terrestrial network. Closely related to that, of course, terrestrial networks are fragmented country to country.

You know, there’s a different terrestrial cellular network in each country, whereas the satellite alternative could be much more homogenous across countries, across geographies. So it’s about peace of mind, I think. It’s about knowing that there is a possibility to communicate almost no matter what happens, and again, there’s an ecosystem effect associated with that. You know, the standardisation of devices, again, the 3GPP initiative where you [00:15:00] get devices which can connect to cellular networks and satellite networks that drives scale, drives down the costs of those devices, drives up the number of devices that can connect to satellite, et cetera.

So again, I think it’s kind of a right technology, right time.

George Malim: Yeah, that’s a great response. Thank you. Um. Mark, what’s your view on blending multiple technologies together to kind of optimise cost, but also optimise resilience.

Mark O’Connell: I think, you know, I think you gotta look at the spectrum. Mission critical communication is about the confidence that the network is there when you need it. Okay, and I think, you know, to Jim’s point, if a cellular network is there, of course people are going to go over that network. Is divided the traffic and the cost that is going to happen with that. But the reality also is that there’s many parts of the globe, including in Europe that do not have cellular coverage because it’s in a dark spot, or it’s just outside of the coverage area. And think about descriptive they need to have the network that can do that. So, you see with our RM200 [00:16:00] product, this capability of merging satellite and terrestrial, you know, options for people to be able to develop product sets that can operate in cellular where it makes sense to do that, and when it fail, that goes away. It falls over into satellite and seamlessly. I think that’s where very much the market is going to go, in terms of being able to have networks that can produce a seamless communication for the end customer so that they have that communication, whether it’s they’re in the middle of the city or they’re out in the countryside in the U.S. or in Europe or Australia, where they run out of terrestrial coverage.

Or there’s a significant event that impacts terrestrial coverage. It can be a major weather system, which we’re seeing these in Europe now more and more. We see them in Ireland, we see them in the U.K., In Europe. We see them across the globe. That impact cellular service up to including such things as the power outage in Spain and Portugal earlier this year where the entire grid went down.

You know, having to have that short that seems to fell over from cellular into [00:17:00] satellite is hugely important. So I very much see satellite as very much part of the fabric of mission critical communications going forward, and that integration between the two in terms of satellite and interest working together will very much be, I think, part of the future.

George Malim: Do you think there’s a significant implication with cybersecurity here as well? That you know, you could have bad actors attacking all the cellular networks in a specific country and them being able to fell over to satellites, obviously good, but there could be wider issues that take down parts of the network and having a satellite almost as an overlay.

It provides greater critical capability than not having it, and therefore there’s a justified business case. Is that something that concerns you, Jim? As we look at cybersecurity?

Jim Morrish: Uh, yes. I mean, so well, I’ll pick up on the diversity point within that, particularly. So if I spin back 30 or so years to my early days in daily communications industry. When you were connecting a building, one of the things you’ve made sure is that you put the cable in the front of the building and another cable outta the back of the building. You [00:18:00] did not run two cables through the same ducts because that was a single point of failure, and this is one of the things which satellite offers us, you know, no matter what happens to address your network, and in these days of RAN sharing and site sharing, that can be one site that supports multiple networks, or there could be local peaks in traffic, et cetera. So there are things that could go down in terrestrial networks. No matter what happens, you have an alternative channel. So that security that is enabled, the application security of the proposition to the end user, I think yes, is very critical, and I think it is very much something that satellites enables and we’re beginning to see examples of this where for instance, you know, wind turbines might be connected via terrestrial networks, but many of them would have a satellite backup on them to make sure that they always work.

George Malim: Makes sense, and Mark, do you have any views on the increased threat surface and increases in cyber attacks? Does that actually play into your hands and make people want more backup and more alternatives?

Mark O’Connell: I think it’s [00:19:00] part of. I think satellites provide that ubiquitous coverage that our networks don’t. I think by its very nature, just your contact points, they tend to be controlled, harmonious networks, and because, you know, we own our own networks, we own our infrastructure, we own I suppose everything from beginning to end, we can control more efficiently what’s going across on that. So I think satellite can provide that backup where those attacks happen, and cause issues in terrestrial, satellite can provide that backup and support and ubiquitous network, that key information can be still transmitted, across our network to those who need it.

George Malim: Okay, great. Let’s look ahead now and unfortunately, I think we’ve got this far without mentioning the two letters that we have to mention in every conversation in technology, which are A and I. What do you see as the next steps for mission critical satellite communications? Obviously we’re seeing increased automation across the automotive sector. The use of robots in areas such as Senior Care and the application of AI and increased reliance on connected data to power [00:20:00] insights. What will satellite’s role in all of this be? And I’ll put that to Jim first.

Jim Morrish: Challenging one. Um, so, so.

George Malim: Tell us the future in one sentence.

Jim Morrish: Yeah, exactly. So yes, we do have to mention AI. One of the things that is particularly critical for AI though is homogeneity and continuity of inputs. Fragmented inputs, disconnected inputs, out of context inputs, et cetera, make doing AI a lot harder. So again, I think it comes back to this potential to continually track devices and continually monitor to get data from those devices when they’re connected to a homogenous network and a network that is supporting communications to those devices in a similar and homogenous way no matter where they are in the world. That provides the raw information that you need, I think to effectively apply AI to monitor a device estate, and of course in terms of, you know, putting AI on these end devices, again, a good [00:21:00] quality, consistent connection allows much more agility in terms of where you’re gonna put which bits of an AI process, what we can put on the device, what you’re gonna put remotely, and also updating those AI engines in a secure way. I think it’s part of a picture, part of a tapestry.

George Malim: I guess it kind of neatly comes back around to criticality as well, that when if AI is fundamental to whatever business process, or life processes involved, so is the ability to connect AI to centralised servers and whatever, to manage the data flows. Mark, what’s your view of satellite’s role in this automated AI-enabled future?

Mark O’Connell: I think satellite provides the ubiquitous coverage applications that other networks can’t. You know, for AI to work its gotta get the in input, as Jim said. So you need networks that can provide that no matter where that input was coming from the globe, and I think satellite provides the definite assurance that you can get that information when you need it. So yeah, it can keep doing what it’s doing. I think also the increasing innovation in satellite networks and the product [00:22:00] sets brings the cost down, makes it more efficient, makes it more appealing to organisations, and I think also continued integrations to NTN device within NTN, and those devices coming forward would provide more solutions for people to track the information necessary for AI. So, I think satellite is a key part of this. I think it provides that, ubiquitous network beyond cellular and when cellular fails, so for that information to come true. But I also think in tandem with cellular NTN developing new solutions, I think that’s gonna further grow those markets and they’re gonna grow the opportunities for people to trap data, necessary for the utilities to do what they’re supposed to do.

Jim Morrish: Yeah, if I can just pick up on that new solutions point, because there is another dimension to this. It’s the degree to which AI drives satellite connectivity, and there is a clear dynamic there which is particularly around redaction at the edge. So there might be a video camera, and that video camera could stream out high bandwidth information, but if you put AI on board that video camera and [00:23:00] just say, well, tell me, just send an alert if somebody comes within, you know, crosses a certain boundary within an industrial facility, what you’ve done is you’ve massively reduced the amount of information that needs to be communicated, and what that does is it makes many AI enabled solutions much more feasible to deploy via satellite in much more remote locations. So there is very definitely a dynamic that we’re in.

George Malim: That’s very interesting to look at the ability to apply AI to and edge intelligence in general doesn’t all have to be artificial intelligence. Um, to,

Jim Morrish: It does nowadays.

George Malim: yeah. True fact. Um.

Mark O’Connell: and at Jim’s point that actually greatly reduces the cost of the service and makes it more easily to deploy and in greater scale because you’re only trapping the information and sending information that you truly need, and not every piece of information.

George Malim: Yeah, which is again, a way to optimise controlling costs, reduce congestion, make everything more appealing, which I [00:24:00] guess has been the unifying theme throughout today’s, podcast that if satellite has transformed itself from being this kind of elitist geostationary earth orbit situation in which very high cost for very high value use cases and as the cost of launching satellites come down, so have the costs of terminals and so have software which enables the actual payload to be optimised and therefore reduces costs also. One story I’ve seen recently it’s more in the NTN space than the satellite space.

It’s high altitude platform stations, which are, you know, basically UAVs or air balloons that are attempting to in the stratosphere deliver large scale communications of the sort that satellite does. There are loads of problems with this technology though, and it’s taking a very long time to come into fruition. Which I mean, we’ve even seen Google give up. Interestingly, their effort was called Loon, um, which I thought was kind of amusing, but they gave up after 10 years in 2021. Do you, Mark, see those kind of NTNs and kind of stratospheric [00:25:00] types of technologies coming to fruition, and do you think that’s a threat to your business?

Mark O’Connell: I suppose I look at it more from a Globalstar perspective, you know, we’re one of the longest standing satellite providers. Okay. We’ve a proven network over decades. We’re purpose built for mission critical communications. I said we’ve been doing this for a very long time that you not have to set us apart, because people can have assurity, in our network that we will provide the communications when you want the most, and we’ll track the data that you want most, and I think that’s hugely important to people when they’re looking at mission critical systems. That, you know, they want the surety that it’s gonna be there, and I think that is a key part of it. Okay. Um, and add to that we then have an ability to have an end-to-end ecosystem. You know, we can give you the chip set to build out the product that you want to serve as a particular critical need. If you want to have an off the shelf product, we have that also, we can also provide you a differently built [00:26:00] product be for asset tracking or monitoring. We’re indeed for providing a solution to your people in the field. We have that as well, and then, you know, we obviously own and operate our own satellite network and have done so for decades, and that gives assurity, the services there so we can provide you with the service as well. So we can take somebody from the very beginning right through to the vision service, and a system to do that in a very controlled and reliable cost effective manner.

George Malim: I struggle to sort of put my mission critical faith in a, you know, kind of modern version of the Hindenburg and deal with the idea that there’ll be UAVs that need to be replaced every six days to recharge themselves and things like that doesn’t seem a very mission critical, set of characteristics to rely on.

But Jim, I wondered if I could bring you in on that point as well. Do you see that having an impact specifically in mission critical communications?

Jim Morrish: Uh, not particularly, no. So for anyone who’s been knocking around in the broader telecoms industry for a while, Halo is one of those [00:27:00] kind of gap filler or interim technologies that periodically comes up , and people say, “Hey, this would be a great idea if we could do this” before getting overtaken by some other technology, and then people forget about it for a while and then it comes back again, and I think this is probably at least the third advent of people saying, “Hey, well, we have higher altitude platforms”, and the reality is, do it better with Leo satellites. You don’t need, a high altitude, low earth orbiting, or low orbiting platform that fills a gap which Leo satellites have now filled. I don’t really see them doing it again.

George Malim: Technology that’s missed the boat, which happens from time to time. Great. Sorry, Mark, I think I cut you off when we were talking about, kind of ubiquitous mission critical communications in the context of looking at rival technologies to low Earth orbit. Were there any other points that you wanted to make on that strand?

Mark O’Connell: Well, I think Jim probably actually made it, but I’m just gonna comment that, you know, Leo satellites are well put out precisely at all 10 to 15 years, 15 being more common. So once they’re [00:28:00] launched and in orbit, they will provide reliable, steady communication for that period of time. So, you know, that gives people the assurity that the network is there when they need it.

George Malim: Sure, and that’s what mission critical communications are all about. I think that’s an excellent point to, end today’s podcast at. So thank you very much to Jim Morrish from Transforma Insights and Mark O’Connell from Globalstar for joining me today. I think it’s been a very interesting discussion and I hope that listeners have enjoyed it too.

Obviously, we look forward to welcoming you back to another IoT Now podcast soon. Thanks from me. Bye.

Mark O’Connell: Thanks, George. Thank you Jim.Jim Morrish: Good to join you. Cheers.