We talked about Sateliot a long time ago. It is one of the most promising companies in satellite matters, it was born in Barcelona and is about to make history by launching the first satellite under the 5G standard, as promised in the interview we did with Jaume Sanpera, its CEO, in April of the year past.
One year later, this nanosatellite will be launched with the idea of starting to offer 5G coverage for the Internet of Things. One of the companies with which it has contracted the services that this low-orbit nanosatellite, known as The Groundbreaker, will provide is Telefónica.
Aboard a Falcon 9 from California
The Groundbreaker will fly into space aboard a Falcon 9 of SpaceX, launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Already at the time, Sanpera explained to us that the 3GPP 5G NB-IoT NTN Release 17 standard was the first to contemplate satellite connectivity, something that ultimately motivated the creation of Sateliot.
The idea is to continue launching nanosatellites —five more in the remainder of the year— to gradually expand their coverage until reaching enough to be able to provide real-time satellite connectivity for any use.
The semantics of “real-time” depend on its intended use. A nanosatellite offers global coverage, but only for two moments each day. Going on adding more nanosatellites will allow latency to be cut, and therefore, increase the use cases that can benefit from this coverage, the great benefit of which is that it will not require devices adapted to satellite connectivity, but it works with any 5GContrary to what has happened so far.
Sateliot’s plans include reaching 64 nanosatellites in 2024 and 250 in 2025, a figure that they classify as “almost real time“. In maritime logistics, real time is considered once every two hours to record the exact position of a ship. In an environment such as agriculture, once every four hours may be sufficient. The more satellites, the more frequently update.
Much later, the intention is to offer real-time connectivity so that the operators that use Sateliot can boast of “global coverage”. Where your own antennas don’t reach, your customers will be able to use satellite coverage to stay connected, at least in a basic way. The operators would pay Sateliot in the same way that they can pay another telco for a roaming service. Sateliot’s business model involves low prices offset by volume.
There is still time for this scenario, but during the month of April the first nanosatellite will be launched, which will begin to make possible the plan that its CEO told us about just a year ago. In a first phase that will last for years, limiting itself to the connectivity of objects, yes. “Sateliot enters a new dimension, both from a technological and a commercial point of view,” explains Sanpera. We will follow it closely.
Featured Image | Sateliot.
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