"We are seeing increased demand from government customers for commercial X-band capacity for critical requirements," said Wendy Lewis, director of communications, Loral Space & Communications. "Satellite capacity providers and terminal manufacturers are helping to meet the need by providing COTS solutions." In the case of Swe-Dish, its terminals supply major broadcasters, armed forces and host of others, including disaster relief organizations, live transmission of video, data, Internet and voice content from anywhere in the world.
While most telecom industries show only minimal recent revenue growth, government entities purchasing capacity from commercial satellite providers has grown at an extremely high rate, according to analyst Daniel Longfield of Frost & Sullivan. During his 10 years at the firm he has noted that most telecommunications industries experiences roughly a 3 to 5 percent annual increase in revenue. Government/commercial satellite deals in recent years average about a 15 percent revenue increase, he said: "This is one of the few telecom markets with a finite supply and almost unlimited demand." With need being so great and other signal capacities filled nearly to the brim, Longfield said he expects "X-band is going to grow rapidly."
Swe-Dish said its deal with XTAR is also important because it establishes the birthing stages of an XTAR certification process, similar to the one currently in place for the Wideband Global SATCOM system. "I think customers like to see a certification process available," said Mark Steel, senior vice president of engineering for Swe-Dish. "They can buy with confidence knowing they can get onto a satellite without problems or restrictions."
InSchmidt said he's hopeful the certification will soon help both his company and Swe-Dish bring more people to commercial X-band. I hope that "this will help Swe-Dish to sell more terminals that would require commercial X-band, and that those customers would come back to utilize XTAR," Schmidt said. -- Virgil Dickson