All up, 2006 has been a good year for the satellite industry - if you don't count the shutdown of Connexion By Boeing's inflight broadband service or the Indian Research Space Organisation losing its INSAT-4A satellite after its domestic GSLV rocket crashed. Such mishaps aside, the satellite industry overall appears to be continuing the growth it demonstrated in 2005 after years of declines and flat growth.
It's also been a year of interesting developments. On the operator landscape, for example, we saw SES Global's acquisition of New Skies, Inmarsat's partnership deal with Asia Cellular Satellite (ACeS), and - perhaps most remarkably - the arrival of a new entrant in the already fragmented Asia-Pacific market: Asia Broadcast Satellite.
Co-founded by former SpeedCast chief Thomas Choi and satellite industry veteran Gregg Daffner, and backed by majority shareholder Citigroup Venture Capital International, ABS acquired prime real estate in September when it bought Lockheed Martin Space Communications Ventures and Lockheed Martin Intersputnik, now the former owner of the LMI-1 satellite.
Armed with 28 C-band and 16 Ku-band transponders, the newly christened ABS-1 has a footprint covering Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and has DTH and CATV distribution, IPLC, IP backbone and GSM backhaul services on offer.
How well ABS fares against the establishment remains to be seen, but Daffner is optimistic, pointing out that PanAmSat was once a small, hungry operator trying to take on Intelsat. 'We may not be big, but we're nimble and fast and fully engaged on the front line of the business,' he told Telecom Asia.
Still, it would be hard not to be optimistic at a time when revenues are rising across most sectors, operators are finding ways to cash in on growing terrestrial demand for video services, and the launch industry is in full swing after several decidedly lean years. If there's any cause for pessimism, it's that satellite still remains the last of the unliberalized telecoms sectors. Even that's starting to change as satellite players and organizations become increasingly vocal on the issue. But security issues will always be part and parcel with the satellite business - witness the Galileo project, which has been a political football from Day 1 and may spark more national security fears on the news that it may officially end up being used for military apps after all.
An interesting year, indeed, and one almost impossible to summarize in a short article. So we've sorted through the year's headlines and trends, and selected the top five satellite highlights of 2006.
1. We want deregulation and we want it now
The latest annual report from the Satellite Industry Association on the state of the industry, released in June, was bullish on the industry's performance in 2005, with most sectors (except manufacturers) reporting revenue growth driven largely by DBS-type services, which in turn has been driving revenue growth for the satellite ground equipment sector. The reasons vary, but one of them, according to the SIA/Futron report, was this: 'Regulatory changes are increasing the number of channels carried and markets opened around the world.'