Eutelsat kickstarts IoT business with GEO Ku-band service

WASHINGTON — Fleet operator Eutelsat Communications of Paris on Oct. 28 mentioned it’s beginning a connectivity service for Web of Issues units utilizing its geostationary satellite tv for pc fleet.

The service, referred to as Eutelsat IoT First, precedes a low-Earth-orbit constellation of 25 smallsats and hosted payloads Eutelsat plans to begin launching next year. 

Luis Jimenez-Tunon, group government vice chairman of Eutelsat’s knowledge enterprise, mentioned Eutelsat’s transfer to begin a geostationary IoT service doesn’t remove the necessity for the corporate’s Eutelsat LEO for Objects constellation. 

“They serve totally different consumer wants and object-connectivity wants,” he mentioned in an interview. “It’s not that ELO will change the Eutelsat IoT First proposition, it’s simply that they’re complementary.”

The geostationary Eutelsat IoT First service will hyperlink “giant fastened property” in Ku-band that want to maneuver lots of of megabits value of knowledge over the web, Jimenez-Tunon mentioned. Eutelsat’s LEO constellation will use ISM frequencies to attach smaller units that solely want to maneuver a number of bytes of knowledge per day, he mentioned. 

Eutelsat has put in three IoT community hubs — one inside its Rambouillet, France, teleport and others with accomplice websites, X2nSat in Petaluma, California, and Microspace in Raleigh, North Carolina — to allow the Eutelsat IoT First service. MBI Group of Pisa, Italy, is offering the hubs, that are specialised for IoT as an alternative of conventional satellite tv for pc companies like connecting very small aperture terminals, he mentioned. 

As a Ku-band IoT service, Eutelsat might find yourself competing with Kepler Communications of Toronto, Canada, whose LEO cubesats use the identical kind of frequency. 

Jeffrey Osborne, Kepler’s co-founder and vice chairman of enterprise improvement, mentioned that whereas Kepler’s service can be designed to move giant knowledge volumes, he sees little danger of aggressive overlap. 

“For patrons that need to transfer a big quantity of knowledge at a low-cost, we’re extremely appropriate for that software,” Osborne mentioned by e-mail. “To that finish, we see ourselves as complementary to different Ku-band service choices whether or not they be Eutelsat’s Ku-band IoT service, or conventional Ku-band broadband satellites, and even giant [non-geosynchronous satellite systems] in Ku-band.” 

“The trick is to construct a full answer that is ready to intelligently route knowledge between totally different networks primarily based on buyer calls for for value, latency, and knowledge quantity,” Osborne added.

Jimenez-Tunon mentioned the Eutelsat IoT First service prompts Oct. 29 throughout the Americas, Europe, the Center East and Northern Africa. Eutelsat is contemplating increasing the service to sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific, although such expansions, notably into the Asia Pacific, may require extra teleport infrastructure, he mentioned. 

Eutelsat’s ELO smallsat and hosted payload constellation will use current floor stations and never the identical floor section hardware because the GEO service, he mentioned.

Eutelsat is advertising and marketing its geostationary IoT service to satcom resellers, giant mobile communications corporations, and the rising area of devoted IoT options integrators, Jimenez-Tunon mentioned. 

French IoT firm Sigfox, which is a Eutelsat accomplice on its ELO constellation, may turn into a buyer for Eutelsat’s GEO service too, he mentioned. 

Jimenez-Tunon mentioned Eutelsat IoT First hardware will value clients about $200, if not barely much less, and knowledge subscriptions will probably be “a number of euros per thirty days,” relying on the quantity of knowledge required.