Quick thoughts from Satellite 2018

After three days downtown in DC for Satellite 2018, I'm playing catchup.

From some of the speeches, it sounds like the satellite industry recognizes it needs to move outside of its comfort zone to expand the market.  For example, the CubeSat-based IoT companies are (begrudgingly) are expanding the market for IoT services as a whole. EUTELSAT's announcement of an IoT cubesat experiment also opened discussion.

Is talking about the "other" <Pick a number> "billion" a marketing shame? There's a lot of talk about serving the underserved/unserved, including developing markets in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, but nobody outside of UK-based Sky and Space Global (skyandspace.global) is willing to discuss price points for the end user in line with tens of (US) dollars per month on ARPU. 

Customers for Sky and Space and others will be found not at the satellite shows, but at more traditional reseller events, including CES.  While the bigger enterprise play guys need to show up at an Enterprise Connect style show, but this begs the question if Enterprise Connect will make room for satellite people to pitch...

Antennas are the critical technology everyone is talking about, but trying to road map who will produce the best antenna at the lowest price is another story.

Optus teams with Telesat on trials of LEO communications satellite