Credit: Telesat
PARIS — Veteran maritime satellite connectivity providers Speedcast, Tototheo Global and KVH said the arrival of Starlink and soon other broadband LEO constellations has given them more options to serve customers by proposing options that were not available until now.
In comments that would have been unthinkable little as a year ago, the three companies said the painful transition from a GEO-orbit-centric business to one where LEO looks to be taking over is allowing them to prove their worth in a more complex connectivity environment.
Speedcast, which reported revenue of about $500 million in 2024 and operates in some 70 nations, said its decision three years ago to become a Starlink reseller despite providing around 50 Gbps of throughput from GEO satellites leased from third parties has already demonstrated its value.
James Trevelyan. Credit: WSBW video
The company announced in November that it had sold more than 10,000 Starlink kits. James Trevelyan, executive vice president of sales, said skeptics weren’t convinced that they would all be sold.
“And then we sold them,” Trevelyan said here Sept. 16 at World Space Business Week (WSBW), organized by Novaspace. “Then they said, ‘OK, but how many have you activated? We are activating lots of kits.”
‘Our monetisable data on Starlink is growing at 15-20%/month, nearing 100 million gigabytes/year’
What kinds of activations?
“Vessels are very different. Some are 100 times more valuable to someone like us than another vessel,” Trevelyan said. “When I think about where we are this year, with predominantly maritime mobility, our monetisable data on the Starlink network is growing at a compound monthly rate of 15-20%. That means we are handling not far from 100 million gigabytes a year.”
Trevelyan said that with Eutelsat’s OneWeb constellation moving fully into the market, with Amazon’s Project Kuiper and other LEO broadband players on the way, it’s not too soon to think of a time when a company like Speedcast will dispense altogether with GEO satellites.
“We are now having conversations about all-LEO systems,” Trevelyan said. “There are only two LEO broadband services at the moment. Kuiper will come soon. Iridium is a LEO system in its own right. And no one in their right mind would avoid having some kind of terrestrial mobile system, no matter what their application, unless it’s too far offshore.
“There are still tons of customers that are using GEO as a primary. But the situation has changed in 12 months. OK, there is the odd Starlink outage — so what? It’s now going to be my primary, GEO is my fail-save and I can’t do without it and I might even steer my voice traffic over it.
“I could give over 2.5 Gbps to a small ship, with a packet-loss ratio sub-1% and sustained throughput. And not cruise-ship-like pricing. It’s extremely modest. There is tons of capacity over the oceans, we know that. We’re at a development stage for the LEOs where they don’t need to do that yet. But it’s there and waiting to be turned on.
“The question is: What color is it in the future? I think inevitably it’s going to be all-LEO.”
Despina Theodosiou. Credit: WSBW video
Despina Theodosiou, chief executive of Tototheo Global, recently expanded its contract with fleet operator SES’s Commercial Maritime Service, which uses GEO-orbit high-throughput wide-beam satellites.
Notwithstanding this, Theodosiou said LEO constellations, starting with Starlink, are remaking maritime connectivity at a breathtaking pace.
“LEO hasn’t killed VSAT, at least not for now,” Theodosiou said. “But it has killed single-orbit thinking, and very fast. We are way past that. I have been in this industry for around 20 years, and the last three years have been so fast in how things changed.
“Hybrid is here, it’s what we offer our clients and what they are asking for. As for LEO-LEO [as a future option], we get a lot of questions about that. It’s something that’s being discussed. A lot of our customers do use GEO, many not as primary anymore,” she said.
Even more importantly, LEO connectivity, with its relatively low price, low latency and high capacity is giving shipowners so many options for bandwidth use that service providers like Tototheo have been asked to guide the transition.
“How the story has changed is now there’s choice,” Theodosiou said. “Our customers do not have to accept a one-size-fits-all solution anymore. That puts a lot of pressure on us, because we need to evaluate every day what we bring to the table. But that’s something that we were happy to welcome. We are happy to prove our value. Customers are coming to us and saying: This is where I want to get. How can you help me?
“LEO is what they’re using not only for crew welfare but for business-critical applications as well. A few years ago we would not even be talking about LEO. “Things have changed so much that I would not discount anything. Within the maritime satcom space we need to be much more open-minded about what’s coming because change is coming very quickly now.”
Brent Bruun. Credit: WSBW video
US-based KVH, which is publicly traded, has had to explain to investors the radical changes imposed on the company by the changed maritime connectivity landscape.
But in August KVH Chief Executive Brent Bruun said that, for the first time, the increase in KVH revenue from Starlink and, to a lesser extent, OneWeb services surpassed the decline in legacy VSAT revenue.
Bruun said many of the company’s 8,000 vessels under service contract have retained their VSAT service despite the fact that they also now include LEO from Starlink or OneWeb.
‘Two years ago, $20,000 VSATs & bandwidth at $10/gigabyte. Now, LEO terminals at <$2,500 & $10/gigabyte
But there is no arguing the sea change that LEO has offered.
“It’s a factor of 10,” Bruun said. “A couple of years ago, we were thrilled when we got up to 20 Mbps on our 60-cm VSAT. Now it’s 200 Mbps. We sold VSATs for $20,000. Now we’re selling [LEO] terminals for less than $2,500.
“Even though we didn’t sell speed, when you do the math we sold our bandwidth for $10 a gigabyte. Now we’re selling it for $1 a gigabyte.
“That has changed the behavior, changed the amount of bandwidth available on board and changed the economics of getting a robust service. It has changed everything. So the thirst for bandwidth that you have on land is now being duplicated at sea. And it’s going to continue as we see data speeds going beyond what we see today.”
Bruun said KVH is giving customers breaks on VSAT prices “because they are not using it.
“We used to factor in an eight-to-one oversubscription rate on a VSAT network. Now, with the hybrid, it’s 20- or 25 to one. So they are not paying the same prices as they did, obviously.”