Plus: India’s satcom market is ready for scale
By Dan Robitzski
Welcome back to our weekly newsletter highlighting the opinions and perspectives of the SpaceNews community.
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African nations and the African Space Agency (AfSA) have built serious momentum in their funding and support of space programs. That momentum makes now the perfect time to further solidify the United States' relationship with spacefaring African nations, according to a commentary article by Scott Firsing, director of business development at CesiumAtro, and Zolana João, the founding general manager of Angola’s National Space Program.
That comes from offering real support beyond signatures, they argue, such as a path to the moon.
"African governments are not choosing one geopolitical camp over another. They are choosing partners that help them advance their own interests. This is a natural instinct, which Washington should expect. The question is whether the American offer is durable enough to stand out, not for a signing ceremony or a press release, but over the life of a program."
Read the full SpaceNews commentary here
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As high-throughput geostationary orbit satellites increase capacity for satellite constellations, India may find itself at a decisive decade for its satcom market as historic bottlenecks open up.
"The opportunity is grounded in India’s uneven connectivity profile," SatNxt CEO and founder Vivek Prasad wrote in a recent opinion article. His company's analysis found that India has more than "than 400 million people either unconnected or poorly connected, along with millions of sites where terrestrial networks are present but not resilient enough for education, healthcare, financial services, public infrastructure, defense, energy, logistics and mobility."
He argued that it's time to build strategy around satellite communications, rather than treating it as a fix for otherwise missing connectivity. "Policymakers, satellite operators, VSAT service providers and investors should align around practical use cases, affordable deployment models and compliance-ready infrastructure that can translate capacity expansion into real market adoption," he wrote.
Read the rest of the article here.
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FROM SPACENEWS |
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What Comes Next for On-Orbit Servicing? Join us on Wednesday, Sept. 23 for conversations about the tech, policies and business models required to build a functioning in-orbit logistics ecosystem. Col. Scott Carstetter, director of servicing, mobility, and logistics at Space Systems Command, and other experts will explore what comes next for the technologies, policies and business models required to build a functioning in-orbit logistics ecosystem. Register now. |
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