Last month, Eutelsat America Corp. + OneWeb Technologies Inc. (EACOWT) announced a new brand identity for the U.S. proxy company of parent company Eutelsat: Eutelsat Network Solutions. Constellations talked to Ian Canning, president and CEO of Eutelsat Network Solutions, about what the new brand reflects, the evolution and disruption of the industry and what’s next.
Why was the decision made to rebrand?
Having brought Eutelsat America Corp. and OneWeb Technologies together, we were going through some brand refresh discussions. We had evolved and we wanted our brand to be more reflective of what we actually do in the marketplace.
First and foremost, we do predominantly represent both the GEO and LEO constellations to our customers. But we do some other ancillary items as well. We provide and support terminal evolutions and we support some alternate technologies as well, particularly [positioning, navigation and timing] PNT. And we do that in such a way to really deliver network solutions rather than just an underlying capability.
Our parent very much delivers broad wholesale capability, and we take that wholesale capability and wrap it into an end-to-end service if that’s what the customer desires, or we’ll integrate it into broader capability to deliver a bespoke network solution. Being flexible in that way tends to allow you to both differentiate your service offering and provide a quality of service that meets customers’ needs.
Being flexible tends to allow you to both differentiate your service offering and provide a quality of service that meets customers’ needs.
You could ask, why are we not “government solutions?” Because while that’s our predominant focus, we don’t just do government solutions. We also support commercial entities. We wanted to have a name that represented the breadth of our capability and the depth of our knowledge.
What do you see as some of your competitive differentiators?
Having both GEO and LEO constellations is definitely a key differentiator. We’re rather unique in that sense. But differentiation goes well beyond that. We’re not just a middleware Internet pipe. We will design bespoke network solutions for our customers. We will meet their security requirements. We will bring together the right network capability, the right terminal capability, sometimes also the right partner into the mix. If we don’t have all of the capability, we will then add third party capability into the mix to deliver the overall solution.
We’re unlike Starlink, which is very vertically integrated. We take a far more open approach to seeing what the best-in-class capabilities are in the marketplace.
Another part of our competitive differentiation is we have somewhat of a horizontal integration model into the marketplace. So, we’re unlike Starlink, which is very vertically integrated—you take everything from them in the way they want to deliver it to you. We take a far more open approach to seeing what the best-in-class capabilities are in the marketplace.
An example of that is a major food wholesaler across the US. Their network needs to be highly resilient, but they don’t want capability sitting there underutilized all the time. When there are challenges in the terrestrial network of a magnitude that impacts them, it tends to impact not just the terrestrial network, but also the cellular network and so on. We integrated ourselves into that disaster recovery scenario, such that we’re a seamless failover supporting their operations.
What’s the balance between your government and commercial customers?
Today, it’s probably 70% government, 30% commercial. It ebbs and flows because at times the group might ask us to do something in the commercial space because of the capability we have, and we’ll support that. But our focus on where we spend 90% of our time is towards the DoW and government space.
What are some of the challenges of operating both GEO and LEO networks?
The network architectures of GEO and LEO are very different. They can be integrated and we do integrate them in certain scenarios, but that’s not necessarily the right fit for every customer, so we’re not trying to force fit that we have this LEO and this GEO network capability and you must take it all from us. We look to optimize based on the customer need.
GEO and LEO can be integrated and we do integrate them in certain scenarios, but that’s not necessarily the right fit for every customer.
People are seeing the value of redundancy of orbits. We certainly take advantage of that. But that has also required some new terminal types to become available over the last year that have that inherent capability in a single terminal, because there’s no point in having one network if you have to deliver it to two different terminals.
I have to give full credit to the parent company. They’ve done really all of the heavy lifting as the operator of the two constellations. We have collapsed the supporting infrastructure to really support both the networks seamlessly. So now we have a single operations group that manages both the LEO and GEO Network. We have single customer entry points for both networks. So, we’re not asking our customers to worry about which network you are on.
Do you view fiber and 5G networks as competitive or complementary?
The rollout of cellular networks and terrestrial networks has changed the landscape for satellite networks. I often remind people that terrestrial and ground is another option in in the mix of capability. It’s another orbit. It happens to be at ground zero, but it’s still another orbit.
If all you need is a basic Internet service, you can rely on a single thread to do that. Obviously cellular networks across most of the US and the rest of the world are in pretty good shape to do that. But if you need resiliency, if you need redundancy, if you need secondary or tertiary backup solutions, that can’t do it for you.
It’s a very big world out there, and connectivity is key.
This is where we spend a lot of our time learning and optimizing. You have to integrate into that environment in that sort of horizontal manner rather than seeing it just as a competitor. You do yourself a disservice to say that any one technology might be just a competitor. It’s a very big world out there, and connectivity is key.
What trends do you see potentially disrupting the industry?
It’s fair to say that the satellite industry was in a fairly static mode for a number of years, probably until about five years ago when we got new entrants and disruptors—OneWeb as a LEO constellation being one of those, obviously with Starlink following and so on. That’s been really good for the industry. I’m not underestimating some of the challenges that come with that, but it forces you to look at what you do, how you do it and how you can be better at what you do. A competitive market in any industry is good. It keeps everybody on their toes, and it drives innovation, and it drives you to think differently and do things differently. I see that continuing in our space. I don’t see that that slowing down by any stretch of the imagination.
A competitive market keeps everybody on their toes, and it drives innovation, and it drives you to think differently and do things differently.
We’re looking forward to Eutelsat replenishing our current network with some new capital investment. We’re also looking at the IRIS2 evolution for our next generation supporting the European Union. There’s a lot still to come in this space, and we all have our niche and our capability to fit into different scenarios. Being clear about what you do, how you do it, why you do it and when you do it is absolutely critical.
Any other predictions on what’s next?
There are so many elements to that question. We’re living in a very dynamic global economic environment, with politics around the world creating other challenges. Some of those scenarios have led us to develop some unique capabilities to support alternate PNT capabilities. That’s providing protection for people that need it, whether that’s critical national infrastructure here in the US, or people in more challenging environments in Europe where interfering with GPS and PNT becomes more critical.
We’re looking forward to evolving that here over the next six months. We’ve got some very interesting plans that we’re looking to bring to bear and also looking to bring some very innovative product capabilities to bear that again support that redundancy, resiliency, multi-orbit capability and multi-constellation.
We’ve gone through the buildout phase. Now our job is to deliver that capability and support users in the field, whether that’s in a foxhole somewhere or on an aircraft or on a naval ship in the middle of anywhere.
We are in a very fortunate position that we have both of our constellations up in the sky operating. We’ve gone through the buildout phase. Now our job is to deliver that capability and support users in the field, whether that’s in a foxhole somewhere or on an aircraft or on a naval ship in the middle of anywhere.
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