The total satellite industry today is estimated to produce about 1% of global communications revenues. Anybody care to try for 2%?  At the 2009 NAB Show, the  World Teleport Association and Society of Satellite Professionals International produced another year of their Content Distribution Forum on the show floor. Attendance was great despite the decline in overall exhibition traffic in this year of recession, which is having such an impact on the media business.

The 8th annual ISCe Conference. ISCe 2009, scheduled for June 2-4 in San Diego, California, will focus on SATCOM solutions for homeland security, disaster recovery and support for warfighters in the pursuit of victory. ISCe 2009 will provide attendees with unprecedented access to key military and civil agency decision makers.  

With a new Administration in Washington, D.C., spending priorities across the board are being analyzed and reviewed. The results of this scrutiny could have significant ramification

Satellite TV is the biggest money maker for the overall satellite industry, creating investment, subscriber base and wealth. It rests on the solid revenue footing from a food chain that ranges from the end user paying for subscriptions to networks that collect from advertisers and affiliates like TV stations and cable systems. However, we are witnessing a new business model that provides a free service to end users who only need to buy reception equipment consisting of a dish with a digital set-top-box.

Not too long ago when someone got on the internet the chances were it was to do email or to search for information. In other words communication was mainly one to one and users were primarily consumers of information. With a few exceptions these were not time sensitive pursuits and were heavily biased towards downstream communications. Not any more. Many users have become participants creating, sharing and commenting on content. This will come as no surprise to anyone with children in their teens or twenties, as this change in usage is being driven by them – the Millennial Generation.

by Tom Watts, CEO Watts Capital Partners

The current credit crisis and global recession has pressured satellite industry balance sheets around the world. The question, "Will they run out of cash?" has been asked with increasing frequency about many satellite companies that just months earlier looked forward to seemingly bright futures. While the public equity markets and many sources of debt financing have closed to satellite companies, the market for PIPEs, or Private Investments in Public Equity, offers a potential solution. In fact, the PIPEs market already has been the financial savior of at least one high-profile satellite operator.

The satellite broadband sector has gained a lot of ground as there are now approximately over one million individual users worldwide. These are families and small businesses who subscribe to service providers that address the individual consumer by providing a dish, modem and access to the Internet. With the familiar asymmetrical arrangement, these services deliver download speeds between 200 kbps and perhaps 1 Mbps; and upload speeds that hover at 100 kbps as a peak rate.

Many industry observers are quick to note that the teleport business which has been undergoing considerable consolidation in the last few years is not as viable a business as it used to be. One relatively new entrant to the teleport business is trying to disprove the doubters.

Over 1,000 attendees officially registered for the Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC) conference held in Hawaii from January 17-21, 2009 with 4,000 more participating in the event as "networkers." This number was lower than in previous years, but the quality of the attendees in terms of having top executives of leading companies more than made up for the quantity of delegates. Besides, the PTC is slightly different from other shows in that it has five times as many other participants who can register as a "networker" and still participate in the many activities surruonding the event.

If you think you’ve explored every possible market for  satellite services and products, think again. One of the industry’s best kept secrets is a major trade show that attracts almost three times the number of attendees as the annual Satellite show in Washington, D.C. The Broadcast, Cable and Satellite Eurasia Expo and Conference held annually in Novermber in Istanbul, Turkey attracted 14,000 attendees in 2007 and 511 exhibiting companies from 44 countries.

The satellite industry will be facing serious challenges in raising new capital and credit due to the downturn in the world financial markets. This was the gist of a whole-day ISCe Satellite Investment Symposium (ISIS-NYC) held at the 3 West Club in midtown Manhattan, New York last October 13, 2008.