From something as simple as a connected refrigerator to an entire connected home, the industry is still a bit unsure of how it will handle the flood of connections. 5G is often mentioned, as it is said to be one of the biggest factors. Another, sometimes overlooked aspect, is satellite.

It may be news to you, or maybe not, but satellite has been playing a major part in supporting the IoT, and the immense number of connected devices in remote areas. For consumers, this includes trackers, for businesses, it’s monitoring heavy equipment, trucks, and even pipelines.

And so one major question remains—just how will the IoT affect the satellite machine-to-machine (M2M) market?

After the buzz of conversation around this topic at the SATELLITE 2016 show, we went straight to Mohammad Marashi, VP Innovation and Service Architecture at Intelsat for the answers.

WDD: How will the IoT affect the satellite machine-to-machine (M2M) market?

Marashi: Improvements in throughput and cost that will be enabled by high throughput platforms – in conjunction with innovative ground technology – will drive operational efficiencies for multiple sectors that use M2M technologies. We believe these improvements will resonate on the bottom line, and this, in turn, will spark even more interest in satellite-enabled M2M.

For example, in the maritime sector, ships have been carrying a multitude of data-collecting sensors for decades, but until recently, this data has not been fully utilized to optimize operations because current M2M delivery channels are not capable of moving the data cost-efficiently. The improved throughput delivered by HTS will lead to better tracking of containers, and this could improve utilization by 10-25 percent, potentially reducing annual spending on containers by nearly $13 billion per year in 2025. It is also estimated that these techniques could enable operators to raise average ship speeds by 11–13 percent resulting in an economic impact of $4.5 billion to $9.3 billion in 2025.

WDD: What capabilities will be needed to ensure satellite will play a major role in the IoT?

Marashi: The capabilities necessary to ensure that satellite will play a major role in IoT are already well into development. The high throughput satellites that will deliver improved throughput and better economics are steadily moving into orbit. But to truly have an impact in IoT, we also need to make access to satellite services easier than ever. This requires innovation throughout the ecosystem to facilitate access while also complementing other technologies to enable hybrid solutions.

For example, to fully optimize the performance and simplify access to our technology, we made strategic investments in antenna technology with two providers, Kymeta and Phasor. These partnerships will yield a range of antenna and terminal products across our core application verticals such as mobility, content delivery and wireless backhaul applications. In addition, it will provide the opportunity to expand our reach into new aspects of IoT and M2M and have a significant impact on the ground transportation sector. All of these are expected to see significant demand over the next 10 years.

WDD: What new opportunities will emerge for satellite?

Marashi: NSR estimates that by 2023, there will be 5.8 million M2M and IoT connections via satellite around the globe. This represents a big opportunity for the satellite sector, but we believe that opportunity to be much larger. This is because satellite-enabled IoT is dominated currently by narrowband providers, such as L-band. When high-throughput Ku- and Ka-band connections begin to take hold, we believe the volume of opportunity in the IoT and M2M sectors will be much, much higher, as we also unlock new opportunities in the IoT and M2M sector.

And that is just the beginning, our investment with LEO constellation operator OneWeb will provide a fully interoperable Ku-band GEO/LEO satellite network that will open up even more opportunities. By combining highly efficient GEO broadcast capabilities with high elevation angle LEO solutions for cities; the partnership will deliver unmatched ubiquity and elevation angles for better access to all user environments for mobility and IoT, including urban canyons which will be important for applications such as the connected car.

WDD: Will satellite remain a small niche or will it expand into a larger market, such as vehicle safety?

Marashi: Delivering bandwidth to the “connected car” offers a major market opportunity for communications companies. We are just beginning to see this technology develop with cars on the road today using LTE cellular networks, and satellite is the ideal technology to take the connected car to the next level. The global nature of satellite systems and the ability to broadcast to multiple points will enable auto manufacturers to reach all of their vehicles on a single network, whether the cars are in Canada or South Africa, to provide services such as software updates. This is in stark contrast to having to contract with hundreds of terrestrial cell carriers in order to achieve global coverage. Satellite also offers a consolidated distribution opportunity that reduces cyber-attack vectors by eight or nine orders of magnitude when compared to cellular in terms of entry and exit points, demonstrating the security benefits that satellite delivers, a major requirement for the future of the connected car. While privacy issues need to be resolved, insurance providers, car rental companies and others will be able to monitor driver behavior. Cars already have the equivalent of a “black box” that records operational data. With a connected car, this information could be streamed in real-time to a central location. While some motorists might not want their driving monitored, others might want an insurance discount for safe driving.

Lastly, while some people are talking about the connected car. Intelsat and Kymeta are already driving it. At the Detroit Auto show, Toyota announced that they will leverage Kymeta antennas to power their connected cars.  To demonstrate, Kymeta leveraged Intelsat’s satellite technology and together, we recently completed an 8,000-mile journey across the United States using a Kymeta and Intelsat satellite-enabled test car. Over the course of the tour, the test car automatically acquired and tracked Intelsat Ku-band satellite signals while on the move. In the future, this type of efficient, high-throughput connectivity can be used for services such as delivering software upgrades to fleets of cars while at the same, delivering cost-savings to manufacturers that will no longer have to provide this type of service to each unit individually at designated facilities. Certainly, there are also possibilities in broadcasting software upgrades that affect vehicle safety.