Category Archives: Markets

Utilities Telecom Council celebrates its 65th annual UTC telecom conference in Houston. iDirect will participate as a gold sponsor for the wireless track sessions as well as offer presentations at the conference. Global Marketing Strategist, Michelle Larsen, speaks on what to expect from UTC and what iDirect is exhibiting this year.

Q: Can you explain your partnership with UTC?

A: This is iDirect’s fourth year having a booth at the annual UTC Expo. We greatly value our partnership with UTC and continue to work with them in a variety of ways. We work very closely with them to educate the utilities industry on satellite technology. We worked together to complete both primary and secondary research. We’ve sponsored webinars, spoken at regional events and hosted special events. Ultimately this event gives us a platform to explain what the best ways to leverage satellite are, as well as what iDirect solutions offers to communications professionals and their companies.

Q:  What are you most excited about this year?

A:  We are very excited to be speaking Wednesday in the “Grid Automation and the Power of Satellite” session with our Utility partner Southern California Edison. They will be explaining how they use satellite in their smart grid and the benefits they are experiencing. Read More

by Michelle Larsen, iDirect Vertical Marketing

Alex Gonçalves, System Engineer based in the LATAM region, continues to spread the message of the value of VSAT solutions in the Energy and Utility industry. He presented to a group utility (energy, water and petroleum) professionals a few weeks ago, where iDirect was a gold sponsor, at the UTC AL event in the beautiful city of Florianopolis, Brazil.

In South America, the Smart Grid is in the beginning stages of being defined and utilities are working to modernize their communications networks to meet the new requirements. Their data traffic continues to grow and they need the communications network to be more reliable and intelligent.  A theme that emerged from the event was that one of the most important technologies to use moving forward is MPLS-based networks.

In recent years, a wave of innovation has been focused on integrating satellite IP systems with core terrestrial networks. Most noteworthy, satellite technology has been fine tuned to support MPLS network capabilities. These include advanced IP routing, VLAN tagging and data encryption. Read More

Satellite 2013: Three Panels That Deserve Further Thought – Part 3

The market for in-flight connectivity is a tale of two trends.

This first is that airline installations are in hyper growth. Aviation is embracing connectivity in a big way. Major airlines are busy equipping their fleets with broadband systems and rolling out service offerings. David Brunner from Panasonic Avionics shared these numbers: The company is on pace to equip 500 aircraft this year and 800 next year. It is currently managing 10 teleports that connect to 19 beams across 15 satellites with 1 GHz of satellite capacity under contract. That’s expected to double to 2 GHz in the next 12 months, along with the size of Panasonic Avionics’ overall deployment.

But this needs to be tempered by the second trend – the fact that service take up is lagging. While a lot of aircraft have been equipped, few passengers have been willing to pay for the service. Ian Dawkins of OnAir shared a quite different set of stats. Only 5% to 10% of passengers in general are purchasing in-flight service. That jumps to 35% when the service is offered for free.

The panel offered several explanations. Passengers are entrenched in the habit of disconnecting before take off and reconnecting on touch down. It’s going to take time for them to realize that they can connect in flight. Some are not satisfied with the performance, given what they experience on ground. And for some, the cost is too high. Read More

Satellite 2013: Three Panels That Deserve Further Thought – Part 2

Latin America is hot. Yes, we mean the weather. But the VSAT market too.

One of our favorite sessions at Satellite 2013 was “Latin America – New Orders of Magnitude” chaired by David Hartshorn of the Global VSAT Forum and which featured representatives from Intelsat, SES, Satmex, Hispasat, NewCom and Red 52.

An enthusiastic panel discussed the booming market for satellite in the region, factors driving demand and whether it will slow down.

The big push today is Direct-to-home (DTH) satellite TV. It’s exploding across the region, with an array new TV channels, and even HD programming, being rolled out for a growing middle class population. To support this demand, leading operators are adding new satellites to their fleets. Many are HTS and already sold out of capacity.

It’s not all pay TV, though. A significant amount of capacity is targeted at the fast-growing enterprise market. Panelists stressed strong opportunities in maritime, energy, mining, hospitality, retail, healthcare and manufacturing – with double digital growth rates expected. Read More

Satellite 2013: Three Panels That Deserve Further Thought – Part 1

The Satellite 2013 show last week was certainly an exciting forum for key trends and ideas driving the satellite industry forward. HTS continues to be the main industry buzz, especially as it relates to growth in key vertical markets and globalregions.

Today, we’re kicking off a series of posts that recap three panel sessions that caught our attention. We’ll share why we thought they were important and give our take on how they impact the industry, as well as how we can act on the challenges and opportunities they present.

The Ku Versus Ka Showdown In Maritime – Satellite 2013

Simon Bull of COMSYS moderated a lively industry debate in front of a packed room. The session was titled “Competing Visions for the Future of Maritime Broadband: Ku versus Ka-band.” The question on the table: Will there be a major difference between Ka-band and Ku-band HTS services in the maritime market. Representatives from Inmarsat, Intelsat, MTN, KVH, Telenor Satellite Broadcasting and Astrium Services Business Communications shared their insights.

The overall consensus was that it’s not satellite bands that make the difference, but business models. Essentially, service providers need to look at HTS offerings on both bands and decide what’s the right fit for their go-to-market strategy.

Is it a closed HTS system that enables them to quickly acquire capacity without the cost of owning infrastructure and the time commitment involved to deploy a new network? Is it an open system where service providers bear the cost and management of ground infrastructure, but have the opportunity to bring added value to their customers through SLA design, network monitoring and other offerings? Read More