By: David Helfgott

Every new generation of mobile technology expands the network that little bit further. Better radios, denser infrastructure, and more efficient use of spectrum have slowly but surely pushed coverage into places that once seemed commercially or technically out of reach. The “dead zones” started to disappear. But building tower after tower can only get us so far, especially when the next user might live a hundred miles offshore, deep inside a mountain valley, or in a region where trenching for fiber cabling simply isn’t feasible. 

The satellite industry has now begun to step up to the challenge. Low Earth orbit (LEO) constellations are growing at a faster rate than ever before, with entrants to the market deploying thousands of satellites as they compete to deliver true global interconnectivity. Space used to be viewed as a supplemental network layer, a bridge to fill in the occasional gap, but now it’s critical to the long-term roadmap for expanding mobile coverage itself. 

Common mobile standards are laying a path for operators to extend coverage through space. Rather than treating satellite services as a separate system requiring a separate set of equipment, they’re aiming for convergence. GSMA Intelligence estimates around 3.0 billion IoT devices are currently “addressable” by satellite, spread across a range of industries including logistics, agriculture, finance, healthcare, and various utilities. Terrestrial infrastructure will never be abandoned, but the next phase of mobile network expansion will no longer be constrained by the number of towers we build on the ground. The sky, it turns out, really is the limit. 

Two industries, one language

For most of their history, satellite communications and terrestrial mobile networks have evolved side by side rather than together as one. Each developed its own technologies, commercial models, and ways of thinking about connectivity. Something of a black sheep, satellite communications remained largely siloed from the rest of the telecom industry, built around proprietary networks and dedicated terminals rather than the standards-based ecosystem that transformed terrestrial mobile communications. That approach served us well for many years, but it also artificially limited the role satellites could play within the wider communications landscape. 

The emergence of standardized 5G satellite networks means that, for the first time, satellites are being designed to follow the same mobile standards as terrestrial base stations. That gives compatible devices a path to connect across ground and space where the service is available. It’s a transformational moment for the industry, because it brings two worlds together around a common technological foundation. Instead of building a parallel communications layer in space, we’re now able to extend existing mobile networks beyond the physical limits of terrestrial infrastructure. Once satellites truly become part of the same standards-based ecosystem, operators can begin thinking about coverage in a fundamentally different way.

Consider a shipping container moving from a warehouse to a port and then onto a vessel. Its tracking device might begin its journey on a ground-based mobile network and later move outside the reach of coastal towers. With compatible satellite coverage, the same operator could potentially keep receiving updates without the customer having to manage an entirely separate service. A utility could use a similar approach for sensors scattered across remote terrain, while a network could retain a way to reach customers when a storm takes ground infrastructure offline. These are different services with different demands, but each illustrates the value of treating satellite capacity as part of a wider coverage plan.

The type of device matters as much as the location. A tracking sensor, a vehicle terminal, and an ordinary handset do not necessarily have the same satellite capabilities. Coverage on a map is useful only if the device can use the relevant service and the operator has made provision for it. That is why the path to wider coverage will be gradual, with specific applications and compatible equipment leading the way. Each new use case can establish what works before a broader service is promised.

Network evolution means managing ground and space

That wider coverage plan also changes the operator’s job. Adding a satellite link to a coverage map is only the beginning. The network needs to know when the ground connection is available, when satellite access is appropriate, and what kind of service each can support. A small sensor sending a reading every few hours places very different demands on the network from a person trying to make a call, so sending every connection through the most capable or most expensive route would be a waste of resources. A useful network doesn’t always offer the best possible connectivity by default – it matches the quality of the connection with the demands being placed on it.  Orchestration matters.