Satellite IoT revenue is projected to reach $3.1 billion by 2030, but that growth will depend on spectrum deals, LEO deployments and how proprietary systems coexist with emerging standards.
Read our top four takeaways from our conversation with Jake Saunders, vice president, ABI Research, or listen to the full episode.
Takeaway 1: The market is still dominated by pre-standards architecture.
Standardized non-terrestrial networks (NTN) are advancing through 3GPP Releases 17, 18 and 19, but proprietary systems will continue to account for a substantial portion of satellite IoT connections through the end of the decade, Saunders said.
“Even in fact, by 2030, almost 19 million odd connections are still with proprietary systems,” he said.
Satellite IoT services were operating well before non-terrestrial integration entered the 3GPP standards process, Saunders explained.
“Iridium started operating in the [early] 2000s and was providing some telemetry type services, but as sort of voice-based services,” Saunders said, adding that those systems were built as end-to-end architectures before standardized NTN existed.
“So it’s going to take a little while for some of these end-to-end technologies to build up,” he said.
The long-term direction is convergence between existing satellite and terrestrial networks, which will be easier with the advent of 6G, Saunders said. “With 6G, the satellite component and terrestrial network merge into one and you have one seamless network,” he said.
Takeaway 2: Spectrum deals signal an escalating IoT land grab.
“I think one of the most notable ones will indeed come from SpaceX, in terms of IoT,” Saunders said, referencing SpaceX’s acquisition of EchoStar’s S-band spectrum, “for a cool $17 billion.” That level of investment, combined with filed plans for 15,000 additional low Earth orbit satellites, suggests a much more aggressive push into the IoT and device-to-device markets, he said.
Other operators are also repositioning. For example, SES’s strategic partnership with Lynk, which has approximately 30,000 IoT connections through its merger with Omnispace, will enable the connectivity providers to scale quickly through spectrum and customer base acquisition, Saunders noted. “With SES, Lynk and Omnispace – they’re trying to build some more competition capabilities,” Saunders said.
Another player, AST SpaceMobile, has acquired Ligado’s S-band spectrum to bolster its direct-to-device ambitions, while Iridium “has gone full bore with Release 19 of the NTN standard” in an effort to support the interests of established cellular IoT providers with large portfolios, he said.
Across the board, operators are maneuvering for position, Saunders said. “They’re all going to be falling over themselves to try and capture a slice of this satellite IoT market,” he said.
Takeaway 3: Cost and longevity still define the ceiling.
Standardization is expected to reduce fragmentation, but hardware economics remain a bottleneck, said Saunders.
“What we’re anticipating with NTN, greater standardization will really help to bring down the cost of the terminal. Because fundamentally they’re not cheap pieces of equipment,” he said, adding that terminals can cost several thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars.
That cost structure limits how broadly satellite IoT can scale, particularly in sectors where deployments are measured in thousands of endpoints, and terrestrial IoT providers already have an edge in innovation and deployment.
Satellite IoT module manufacturers are not only competing with their peers but with terrestrial IoT providers that already had an edge in technological development, Saunders said.
“If satellite IoT can get to that levels of battery performance optimization, link budget capability, data throughput, it can then start to take on some of those more increasingly marginal situations and go head-to-head against cellular IoT,” he said.
Takeaway 4: LEO scale is changing what satellite IoT can support.
Low Earth orbit constellations are altering both the economics and performance profile of satellite IoT, said Saunders. “Where we’ve seen with Starlink, what is it now almost 8,000 satellites in orbit ramping up – there’s even more aggressive plans to add another 15,000 odd satellites,” Saunders said.
Today, much of satellite IoT still relies on geostationary systems, Saunders said. “Skylo is using geostationary. Inmarsat has been using geostationary and it’s been very effective. It’s also helped to keep [service] at a low cost,” he said.
As device density increases, however, improved link budgets matter, noted Saunders. “When you get to more growth in number of users, number of IoT devices per square kilometer, having that improved link budget will make a big difference,” Saunders said.
Europe’s planned IRIS2 megaconstellation and parallel efforts like SpaceSail and Guowang in China reflect a broader shift toward LEO-based NTN systems, according to Saunders. “If you want capacity, if you want throughput, if you want reliability, you need to put those satellites into low Earth orbit,” he said, contrasting GEO latency of roughly 600 to 800 milliseconds with Starlink’s 40 to 50 milliseconds. Very low Earth orbit satellites could bring latency down to 30 milliseconds or lower, Saunders added.
That infrastructure sets the stage for broader integration with standardized 5G NTN and eventually 6G convergence, Saunders said. As LEO networks expand and spectrum positions solidly, satellite IoT will gradually move from isolated use cases toward a more integrated later in the global connectivity stack, he said.
For more, listen to the full episode.
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