What I Learned at Satellite 2009

I've spent the past two days at the Satellite 2009 trade show. Given the overwhelming negative news these days, I'm thankful to spend some time with individuals and companies that are doing well, making money and excited about the future. The industry seems to be in a much better place than 2001 and seems poised to motor through 2009.

Here are the main takeaways:

1. Satellite operators and services companies have multi-year contracts that buffer them from somewhat from quarter to quarter fluctuations in the economy.

2. By and large, most satellite companies have remained immune to the leverage mania of the past decade and are in reasonably good financial shape.

3. The government continues to buy a huge amount of commercial satellite capacity.

4. Satellite capacity is at 90% utilized and there isn't a big number of new satellites going up in the next few years so pricing power and margins will remain good. There is no glut, like in 2001.

5. With utilization so high, current issues are interference mitigation and squeezing every last drop of data through the pipe.

6. Communications on the move (COTM) is again a hot application for both the military and commercial customers. I particularly liked the AT&T CruiseCast in-car satellite TV.

As with the FOSE show, I interviewed a number of people about their take on the show, hot trends, etc. We'll be polishing those up over the next few days and releasing them out into the wild...

Whew...what a busy week

I've been down at the Washington Convention Center for the past few days checking out what's new in the satellite technology world. I've been a regular at the Satellite trade show for four years now. What a change!

Back in 2004, the show was basically empty. I made jokes ab0ut tumbleweeds in the aisles. There were maybe 60 companies exhibiting. Morale there was poor, mainly due to the aftereffects of the tech crash and associated satellite industry tumble 2001-2002. The industry was surviving on the first bursts of demand from the military after 9/11. It was the runup to the invasion of Iraq that pulled the satellite industry out of the dulldrums. The government was demanding huge amounts of bandwidth from the satellite industry as its own satellites did not have enough capacity.

The past few years however, the Satellite show has grown tremendously and the industry is vigorous and strong. There are well over 250 exhibitors at the show this year. Demand is being driven by military spending, the rise of digital signage and digital cinema, broadband satellite applications, mobile satellite services (MSS) especially what the military likes to call comms-on-the-move, that is the ability to have broadband IP voice and data access at all times in a moving car, truck, Humvee or tank. Lastly, there is lots of talk about merging the satellite access with terrestrial cellular and Wimax networks into what called a hybrid network.

All in all its a very exciting time in the satellite industry.