Satellite operators need IT rethink to capture new service opportunities

The satellite communications industry is undergoing rapid change as the rise of low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites and direct-to-device services disrupts the market. This is opening opportunities for satellite operators to expand services to more customers and partners. But legacy IT systems could be problematic when it comes to supporting a host of new services, billing relationships and partner interactions.

Geostationary orbit (GEO) satellites, which cover large swathes of earth at altitudes of around 22,200 miles, provide broadcast services for large media enterprises and low-bandwidth connectivity services to relatively few users in remote areas.

The proliferation of smaller LEO and middle earth orbit (MEO) satellites has made it possible to provide higher-speed broadband services direct to consumers as well as mobile connectivity direct to smartphones.

“With LEO and MEO, compared to traditional satellite, the performance, capacity and cost are dramatically better. [Satellite services] have gone from a limited service with large delays and very expensive capacity, which was tremendously important if you had no alternative but could not really compete as a mass market offering. Now suddenly that’s feasible,” said Grant Lenahan, Partner and Principal Analyst at Appledore Research.

“There is a giant task ahead of these companies that they have never really addressed before…They need to start handling mass market orders from individuals and deal with taxes and billing ramifications in potentially 50 to 100 legal jurisdictions around the world. It’s a billing nightmare,” he said.

ODA offers blueprint for satellites

As satellite services become mainstream, operators are having to change their systems, explained George Glass, Chief Technology Officer at TM Forum.

“They need to manage a much bigger number of customers, create accounts for them, set up pricing plans, and bill them, as well as establish wholesale relationships with mobile operators so that they can off satellite services alongside their traditional mobile connectivity services”, said Glass.

TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture (ODA) is “designed to do all of that”, he said. The framework for customer management, product ordering and billing is service agnostic. Whether it is over fixed, mobile, or satellite, the management and operations capabilities use the same APIs with different payloads.

“Satellite operators can automatically get the functionality, flexibility, and agility and extend everything we’ve done for telcos to satellite access. They don’t need to start from scratch or reinvent the wheel. They can take all that architecture that's tried and tested and works at scale,” he said.

Furthermore, he pointed out that most terrestrial operators already use ODA. If satellite operators also adopted ODA, they could use the same API to partner with and sell wholesale services to operators around the world.

Lenahan explained that satellite operators “have not had the ability to handle lots of small orders nor have they had a lot of ability to interact with partners, such as for direct-to-device services, which is essentially going to look a lot like a roaming agreement”.

Here, he noted, ODA can play a role because it is a framework for “communicating between two entities that are going to form an end-to-end communication service.” It could also extend beyond two entities, as in a B2B2x service scenario.

SES runs on ODA

SES is the first satellite provider to achieve TM Forum’s “Running on ODA” accreditation. David Villegas, Director of Digital Architecture at SES, explained in a recent TM Forum interview that the main drivers for adopting ODA are to accelerate providing better products and self-service to customers as well as more efficient operations.

Among the highlights of its ODA implementation, he said SES has automated 90% of the processes for service fulfilment, which means it can activate services five times faster, as well as enabling self-service for customers to order and update products.

Villegas views ODA as helping SES accelerate its digital transformation by leveraging telco standard processes developed over many years as satellite operators are becoming more like communications service providers.

“We need to adapt to the current times. The industry is being reshaped. We are going to be able to be faster at providing the services that our customers expect,” he said in an interview with TM Forum.

SES has led two recent Catalyst projects, Open SATCOM Management and SATCOM + 5G Anywhere. The latter won two Catalyst Awards at DTW24-Ignite in June.

Other satellite providers involved in the TM Forum projects include Airbus and Eutelsat OneWeb.

“The timing to adopt recognised industry standards within SATCOM is apt. If the industry wishes to capitalise on the emergence of LEO constellations, 5G and converging networks, then sticking with current technology stacks simply won’t work. Fragmented systems will inhibit the SATCOM industry to realize its potential to be a truly effective player in new digital world,” said Gareth Kentish, VP of Global Sales at Alvatross, a B/OSS specialist and participant in the Catalyst projects.

“As the demand for multiple end-point services grows, then the need to automate and streamline back-office systems becomes more critical,” he added.

Service assurance challenge 

Another challenge LEO service providers face is in service assurance when it comes to meeting service level agreements. The issue here is that the LEO satellites are numerous and moving at high-speed, making handovers in space and on the ground uniquely difficult, explained Appledore’s Lenahan.

“It’s the ultimate mobile challenge. It’s not just handing off from one well-defined stationary cell site to the next, but I'm moving and I'm handing off between two LEO satellite transponders that are moving very rapidly, and we're moving against a changing geography because you have mountains, clouds, water and things like that,” said Lenahan.

He added, “This all needs to be taken into account when you decide, one, what do I connect to? And two, can I meet the SLA?”