Demand for commercial satellite communications is increasing across the oil and gas sector according to the latest edition of NSR’s “Oil and Gas via Satellite” report.

A surge in demand from Asia, Latin America and the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions means that the overall growth in satellite capacity for the oil and gas sector is likely to outstrip all but the most bullish recent forecasts. The move toward more remote, hostile locations is driving the increased need for satellite communications in the market generally, increasing the total retail revenues to over $1.1bn p.a.

Bandwidth demands are also increasing, requiring over 97 TPEs of C/Ku-band and 9.6 Gbps of HTS capacity in 2021. This represents a real opportunity for everyone involved in the commercial satcom market to grow and develop their value added services. We’ve been active in the oil and gas sector for some years now and look forward to working closely with our partners to help increase our presence there.

The design process of the Iridium NEXT constellation is moving on at pace with the recent news that S3 group has been selected to develop a new custom Integrated Circuit for use in the Iridium NEXT system.

S3 are long standing technical parters for Iridium, having played a key role in the development of the 9602 Short burst data product. Their new design win will see them develop an Iridium Radio Frequency (RF) customer Integrated Circuit to allow next generation Iridium communications devices to deliver the upgraded services enabled by the NEXT system.

Iridium NEXT will enable higher data speeds as well as powerful new services and devices when it launches in 2015. Like all Iridium partners we’re keeping a very close eye on NEXT developments and are pleased to hear that the design process is moving ahead and that everything is on schedule for 2015.

There’s been some exciting news from Iridium HQ over the last few weeks as they announced the completion of the satellite preliminary design review phase of the NEXT program. Completion of this phase is a major step forward for NEXT in that all preliminary design and specification details for the program are now in place.

With full construction due to start later next year (2013), Iridium are now on track to begin assembling engineering model units to verify the design and performance of the system. This phase (Critical Design Review) is scheduled to be complete in the spring of 2013, after which full construction can begin.

With preliminary design agreed and signed off, there are a number of critical milestones still to meet before the NEXT constellation starts launching in 2015.

– 2012: Detailed hardware and software design culminating in the Space Segment Critical Design Review (CDR) in early 2013

– 2013: Initial space and launch vehicle hardware production and extensive performance testing to ensure it meets its requirements

– 2014: Satellite and launcher/dispenser level qualification testing and the initiation of satellite low-rate production in preparation for the first launch

– 2015: First year of launching and integrating Iridium NEXT satellite vehicles into the Iridium(R) constellation; transition to full-rate production

– 2016: Second year of launching and integrating the Iridium NEXT satellite vehicles

– 2017: Planned complete constellation replacement with Iridium NEXT fully operational

Like all Iridium partners, we’re looking forward to seeing what NEXT can do and making full use of its ground-breaking functionality. We’ll keep our readers updates on NEXT developments as the project progresses.

All of our customers will have awoken to the news this morning that a massive solar storm is heading towards earth.

The storm will be the largest we have seen in five years and threatens to disrupt power distribution as well as communications systems and satellites.

The storm is due to hit this morning and last through until Friday.

We’d like to assure our satellite customers that we will be closely monitoring their systems over the coming few days to ensure that they are not affected.

In a surprising move, the Wall Street Journal this week reported on an announcement by the US Department of Defence that they planned to scale back their use of commercial satellites. It’s a surprise as the industry had seen a concerted push from the DoD towards partnering with commercial satellite providers in an attempt to cut costs and supplement their own efforts with help from third parties.

The budget package that was unveiled on Monday seems to reverse this long-established strategy in two key areas, the use of commercial imagery to supplement spy satellites and capacity leasing to provide additional communications bandwidth.

The moves take place despite continued shortcoming in the DoD’s own satellite delivery supply chain. The Navy’s newest communications satellite MUOS is currently 3 years late and around $6 billion over budget. When it finally comes on line it will only operate at 3% of its planned capacity for at least 12 months and yet defence chiefs have refused to augment this with temporary commercial solutions.

While the official explanation for the move is budget cutting, many industry insiders suspect that the DoD’s real motive is to protect their own research and development capabilities from the growing encroachment of commercial alternatives.

It remains to be seen what impact these moves will have on the commercial satellite ecosystem but if (as some predict) the budget cuts reach as high as 40% or $300 million there are bound to be some casualties.

Here’s a fascinating story from one of our esteemed satellite partners, Iridium Communications. It explains how Iridium satellite technology plays an integral part in tackling the growing threat to international shipping from Somali pirates.

Iridium is the preferred communication medium for ship “citadels” – a fortified, onboard panic room where crew can take refuge if the ship encounters pirates. Earlier this year, NATO published guidelines for the comms systems to be used in these citadels and specified self-contained, independent, two-way external communications, sepcifically a satellite voice and email solution.

Due to its global reach, compact size and low latency SBD for tracking, Iridium has emerged as the favoured partner for these on-board emergency systems and is currentle being deployed in citadel systems worldwide.