06.05.12
Posted in Aeronautical, Broadband, Inmarsat, Maritime, Operators, Services, VSAT at 12:45 pm by timfarrar
Without any hint of the PR blitz that I had expected, Intelsat has quietly updated its website to confirm my blog post in March, that it is about to order at least two new satellites, IS-29 and IS-33 to provide high capacity spot beam Ku-band service in the North Atlantic and Indian Ocean regions. These satellites will be in-service in 2015 and 2016 respectively, and are intended to “provide four to five times more capacity per satellite than our traditional fleet” with total throughput “in the range of 25-60 Gbps” (this appears to be a total not a per satellite figure – I would guess the throughput per satellite is around 12Gbps, roughly the same per satellite as Inmarsat’s GX, including its high capacity overlay beams).
UPDATE (June 7): Intelsat has now put out a press release and added more data to its website including a fact sheet, which states specifically that the throughput of 25-60 Gbps is per satellite. Obviously this figure is a wide range but it is clearly much greater than the Global Xpress per satellite capacity. I understand that one reason for Intelsat’s lack of publicity is the quiet period associated with its proposed IPO, but Intelsat definitely considers this a very important development and has been trumpeting it privately to distributors at its recent partner conference.
Intelsat is planning to integrate these new satellites into its existing maritime coverage as shown below (indeed there is less high capacity oceanic coverage than I expected, presumably because it will take time before Intelsat’s existing capacity fills up) and it appears that Intelsat will now be looking to compete head-to-head with Inmarsat’s Global Xpress as well as Viasat (both of which Intelsat appears to be referring to with its comment that “Unlike many new satellite operators, Intelsat is not constrained to Ka-band“)
What we haven’t yet seen are the details of Intelsat’s launch partners. It is clear that one partner is Panasonic, but the more important question is who Intelsat might have managed to secure in the maritime market. Inmarsat’s recent list of XpressLink distribution partners was notable for the absence of Vizada and most other major maritime VSAT providers, so if one or more of these maritime players now makes a substantial commitment to Intelsat, it will be another important sign that the transition to Ka-band in the maritime and aeronautical sectors is far from a foregone conclusion.
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04.30.12
Posted in Broadband, Globalstar, Handheld, Inmarsat, Iridium, LDR, Maritime, Operators, Services, Thuraya at 8:49 am by timfarrar
I noted back in November that the MSS industry was seeing a dramatic deceleration in revenue growth, but 2012 is already bringing even more challenges across the sector. As I predicted last month, Inmarsat’s price rises are causing a substantial backlash in the shipping industry, with the latest Digital Ship magazine including a devastating letter from AMMITEC (the Association for IT Managers in the Greek Maritime Industry), asserting that:
The handling of the pricing restructuring shows a blatant disregard for the long-term loyalty and trust that, up until a couple of years ago, the majority of the shipping world has had in Inmarsat and its maritime offerings.
Inmarsat’s (not terribly reassuring) response indicates that:
Inmarsat is listening to our customers. We recognise that some of these price changes will be difficult for smaller vessels, and so we will be introducing a small boat package to which they can transition.
However, to the best of my knowledge, this “Small Vessel Pricing Plan”, which Inmarsat told its distribution partners a couple of weeks ago was “in the final stages of development”, has not been announced before the pricing changes come into force tomorrow, and I’ve even heard suggestions that Inmarsat doesn’t actually intend to implement this plan unless it really does suffer from a significant number of customer defections.
Of course, Inmarsat is not alone in experiencing some self-inflicted wounds at the moment. Last Friday brought news that Iridium is implementing a “complete recall” of its new Iridium Extreme handset, while on March 30, Thuraya told its distributors that it had been unable to reach a manufacturing agreement with Comtech for its high speed MarineNet Pro maritime terminal (intended to compete with Inmarsat’s FleetBB) and so the terminal would not be in the market until “the end of the year”. As announced on its Q4 results call, Globalstar ran out of SPOT and simplex devices for a period of time in the first quarter after changing its manufacturer, and will shortly learn the results of its arbitration with Thales Alenia over its satellite contract.
Let’s just hope that all of this mess doesn’t harm the reputation of MSS providers for providing reliable service when its really needed, and in particular doesn’t make it even more difficult for the MSS sector to boost revenue growth in this challenging competitive environment.
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03.15.12
Posted in Aeronautical, Broadband, Inmarsat, Maritime, Operators, Services, VSAT at 12:37 pm by timfarrar
The biggest news of this week’s Satellite 2012 show was only hinted at in the background, with many elements of the announcement (which I’m told was originally scheduled for Monday March 12) apparently delayed while the final details are worked out. Panasonic hinted at their role in this deal on the in-flight connectivity panel, stating that they would be investing “more than any other player in the aeronautical sector” in a new network, while Inmarsat backpeddled on their recent aggressive approach to potential Global Xpress partners, by indicating that they would allow GX maritime distribution partners to keep their own VSAT services rather than being forced to resell Inmarsat’s XpressLink Ku-band service for the next 2-3 years.
What has shaken up the industry is that Intelsat apparently planned to announce additional elements of their global Ku-band maritime and aeronautical service, using new spot beam Ku-band satellites in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific ocean regions. Although Intelsat did issue a press release on Monday, highlighting their focus on mobility, this largely reiterated existing commitments, and omitted both new satellite plans (including IS-29, which is expected to be a high capacity satellite in the Atlantic, and will likely be built by Boeing) and Intelsat’s anchor tenant(s). More details on both of these elements are expected soon. Panasonic will apparently be the anchor aeronautical tenant for this new network and is expected to make an upfront commitment (for purchase of capacity) to help fund Intelsat’s satellite program which could exceed $100M. Many maritime VSAT providers are also looking actively at potential use of the network, as an alternative to Inmarsat’s Global Xpress project, because Intelsat have promised to operate purely as a wholesale capacity provider, rather than competing with their own customers as Inmarsat is doing. The cost of Intelsat’s Ku-band capacity is said to be comparable to Global Xpress (though that will undoubtedly be disputed by Inmarsat), and with Intelsat’s numerous Ku-band mobility beams, coverage will apparently be nearly as great as on Global Xpress.
The repercussions of this development are far-reaching, not least because it will make Inmarsat’s already challenging GX transition plan even more tricky. Inmarsat have recently backed off their original plan to select Rockwell Collins as the aeronautical terminal and distribution partner for GX and now appear poised to use Honeywell (who were originally Panasonic’s terminal development partner before Panasonic opted to bring that work in-house). Up until this week Inmarsat were requiring potential GX maritime distributors to drop their own VSAT service and instead act as agents for XpressLink until GX was launched, but Inmarsat’s CEO indicated on Wednesday that this is no longer the case. And Inmarsat are raising their prices for FleetBroadband service to try and prevent maritime VSAT competitors from using FleetBB as a backup, driving some of them such as KVH into Iridium’s arms with their new (and very aggressively priced) OpenPort backup service, which can cost less than 20% of Inmarsat’s on-demand FleetBB price per Mbyte.
Now the question is whether Inmarsat will have to engage in a further rethink of their maritime distribution strategy (prior to their hastily arranged maritime partner conference in May) as they look to assuage the widespread anger amongst distributors. Many distributors are openly delighted about Intelsat’s move, after they were told at Inmarsat’s January 2012 partner conference that they would just have to accept Inmarsat’s terms, and hand over their VSAT customers for XpressLink, because there was no other choice available. Inmarsat will also have to consider whether their revenue forecast for Global Xpress (of $500M in wholesale revenue by 2019 and $200M-$300M in 2016, based on their 8%-12% p.a. wholesale revenue growth target in 2014-16) is still achievable, especially if some of the key potential partners for maritime GX want to continue to use well-proven Ku-band services and therefore opt to stay with Intelsat for their maritime VSAT capacity.
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03.03.12
Posted in Broadband, Globalstar, Handheld, Inmarsat, Iridium, Maritime, Operators, Services at 8:23 am by timfarrar
Ease your trouble
We’ll pay them double
Not to look at you for a while
And you rely on
What you get high on
And you last just as long as it serves you
Explode or implode
Explode or implode
We will take care of it
This rather dark song seems to sum up perfectly Inmarsat’s current dilemma: will the recent price rises enable Inmarsat’s revenue growth rate to “explode” or will the souring relationship with customers and distributors ultimately cause their business to “implode”? As an article in Cruising World points out, the basic price of Inmarsat’s low end FleetBB plan (the Intellian version of which costs $55 per month) will “more than triple” in May, and “it’s surely looking like the company doesn’t feel much obligation to the boaters who purchased expensive but yacht-size FB hardware once able to get online most anywhere at reasonable costs if carefully used”.
I understand that the amount of bundled data included will double from 5 Mbytes/month to 10 Mbytes/month (which may not be terribly relevant to low end users), but the plan will not longer include any voice and SMS – that will be charged on top, increasing the costs further. Cruising World attributes the price increases to Inmarsat’s loss of LightSquared revenues, which is partially true, though I’m told that internally Inmarsat has set a target of double digit revenue growth within its maritime business, and with the core shipping business very depressed, the only way to do that is to force dramatic price increases upon existing Inmarsat customers.
Almost 60% of all FleetBB users are on this basic plan, and so nearly 15,000 maritime customers will be helping to “ease [Inmarsat's] troubles” by “pay[ing] them double”. More importantly, many of these customers bought their FleetBB terminals in the last two years, and now will most likely feel that they have been the victims of a bait and switch by Inmarsat.
The price changes in Inmarsat’s handheld business are equally dramatic, with roughly 90% of customers using either the basic plan or low end prepaid cards, which are also expected to more than double in price at the retail level. Thus Inmarsat will also be faced with something over 30,000 handheld customers who have bought their phones in the last 18 months and will similarly feel that they have been victims of a bait and switch.
‘Cause you’re deserted
What’s good, you hurt it
And it kills you it keeps you alive
So give it up
In a world of puppets
It’s a shame what they do to us all
Inmarsat will presumably counter that neither group of customers accounts for a large share of their revenues (I would estimate the basic FleetBB plan accounts for perhaps 10% of FleetBB revenues, while handheld is still generating only ~$1M of service revenues per quarter), but it can’t be good for long term business if there are something like 45,000 end users who’ve been hurt by Inmarsat and will be expressing their negative perceptions (“What’s good, you hurt it…It’s a shame what they do to us all”) of the company pretty openly.
Distributors are also likely to be deluged with complaints by these end users, and many service providers are already actively focusing on alternatives to Inmarsat, as we saw with the recent KVH-Iridium partnership. Distributors are thus understandable furious about Inmarsat’s moves, with the (printable) comments I’ve heard ranging from “harsh and irrational” to “just unprofessional” and simply have no idea what Inmarsat will do next.
Though distributors might not be able to “desert” Inmarsat right now, ironically the low end customers that Inmarsat is alienating in the maritime segment are precisely those for whom Iridium’s OpenPort represents a competitive offering. Indeed, in terms of the opportunity that Inmarsat has just created, Iridium apparently feel like its February 2007 (when Globalstar announced that their satellites were failing) all over again.
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02.06.12
Posted in Broadband, VSAT at 11:28 am by timfarrar
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve thought about the value proposition for Viasat’s new Exede satellite broadband service on several occasions, but I still fail to understand what on earth Viasat were thinking when they came up with their new price plans. These plans all offer the same speeds (up to 12Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream) and differentiate only on the amount of data you can consume each month (7.5GB for $49.99, 15GB for $79.99 or 25GB for $129.99).
Viasat have been trying to highlight the superiority of their new service to earlier generations of satellite broadband and potentially also to “low end” DSL, and clearly hope that the new service will dramatically increase the potential market for consumer satellite broadband. However, by focusing on monthly data caps as the only difference between their price packages, when those data caps are precisely their weakness compared to DSL and the major problem as far as customers are concerned, Exede’s price packages appear to violate one of the cardinal rules of marketing, that you should sell your strengths not your weaknesses.
By providing direct price comparisons to 3G and 4G wireless data pricing (at $5-$7/Gbyte), Exede have also given up control of its future pricing (because 4G data could easily drop by 50% on a per Gbyte basis within the next year or two) and highlighted the relative unattractiveness of the service itself (because with 3G/4G wireless you can offload to WiFi for free and usually have a portable device that you can carry around). Although the comparison is certainly a little harsh, if Iridium in the 1990s was a business plan dreamt up by people who were international business travelers and thought everyone else was like them, this looks to me to be a business plan dreamt up by people with a weekend cabin in the mountains who think everyone else is like them.
None of this is to discount the potential of the consumer satellite broadband market, which could certainly expand to roughly double its current 1M users, just by serving consumers as the “last resort” option. However, Viasat has much bigger ambitions (with targets of 5M+ subscribers mentioned) to compete with at least some terrestrial alternatives and is making investment plans for a Viasat-2 satellite on this basis.
To have any chance of success in this endeavor, it seems to me it would have been much better to use traditional price differentiation by data rate (or simply have a basic capped plan and upsell to an “unlimited” plan with a Fair Access Policy) and focus instead on controlling the data consumption of the highest users (as AT&T does with the “unlimited” iPhone users). Of course Exede would then face complaints from those “power” users about how they had not been honest and upfront about the data caps, but at least Exede might then have a more compelling marketing message about how it is superior to low end DSL for the “typical” consumer.
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11.29.11
Posted in Aeronautical, Broadband, Globalstar, Handheld, Inmarsat, Iridium, LDR, Maritime, Operators, Orbcomm, Services, TerreStar, VSAT at 12:20 pm by timfarrar
As I remarked in an interview for the Satellite 2012 downlink newsletter yesterday, 2011 has seen a dramatic deceleration in MSS revenue growth, with wholesale service revenues now expected to grow by less than 3% in 2011, compared to the 7%-8% growth seen in each of 2008, 2009 and 2010. Yesterday we also released our latest industry report which gives ten year forecasts for MSS industry growth. In the L-band market (including Inmarsat L-band, LightSquared, Thuraya, Iridium, Globalstar and Orbcomm) we project cumulative revenue growth from 2010 to 2020 of only 4% p.a. and even when Global Xpress is added to Inmarsat’s revenues in the latter part of the decade, the overall cumulative growth rate is only increased to around 6% p.a.
This represents a striking contrast with widely quoted forecasts from Euroconsult and NSR, that the MSS market (excluding GX) will grow at 7% p.a. over the decade (Euroconsult) or 10% p.a. from 2010-15 (NSR). These optimistic forecasts seem to have achieved wide currency with analysts and bankers, who have argued (for example at the Satcon conference in October) that the MSS industry is more attractive than the FSS industry because of its much faster growth profile. One example that stands out is a JP Morgan analyst report on Inmarsat, published last Thursday, which gives an upbeat assessment of Inmarsat’s prospects and projects a target price of 800p per share (roughly double the current level). Not only does JPM expect LightSquared’s spectrum lease payments to be continued indefinitely after they file for bankruptcy (which is ludicrously unrealistic once you understand that LightSquared’s political backing has evaporated and even the FCC has basically given up on them, but may reflect the fact that JPM co-led (with UBS) the sale of LightSquared’s first lien debt earlier this year), but they expect Inmarsat’s core L-band business to resume growth at 2.5% p.a. from 2012 and Global Xpress to achieve Inmarsat’s target of $500M in annual revenues after 5 years.
Where do we differ with Euroconsult and NSR? It appears the primary source of the discrepancy is in our expectations for the maritime and aeronautical L-band markets. According to the JPM report, NSR is projecting 11% p.a. and 13% p.a. growth respectively for the maritime and aeronautical segments between 2010 and 2015. We are told that Euroconsult also takes a relatively optimistic view of the outlook for the maritime and aeronautical L-band markets. However, our expectations are that wholesale maritime and aeronautical L-band service revenues will actually decline between 2010 and 2020, as customers move to Global Xpress and other VSAT solutions. As a result, future L-band growth will have to come from land-based services, particularly low speed data and (to a much lesser extent) handheld satellite phones. That’s relatively good news for Iridium and Globalstar (as well as Orbcomm, if they can continue to gain momentum), but its still unclear whether ~8% p.a. growth in land MSS revenues will be sufficient for all of these companies to thrive in the face of what will inevitably be an ever-increasing focus by Inmarsat on this part of the MSS market.
If you are interested in our latest report, which also includes a detailed analysis of Inmarsat’s maritime market outlook and forecasts for in-flight passenger communications services, as well as discussion of the current prospects for terrestrial use of MSS spectrum, please contact us for more details about our MSS information service.
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11.05.10
Posted in Broadband, Inmarsat, Operators, VSAT at 3:24 pm by timfarrar
On its results call last night, Viasat said that it is soliciting preliminary technical proposals from manufacturers for a ViaSat-2 Ka-band satellite to complement the ViaSat-1 spacecraft set for launch in the first half of 2011. Viasat is also aiming to sell around 10% of its Viasat-1 capacity to government users and another 10% of the capacity for mobile applications. With the possibility that the Viasat-2 satellite could add beams to target areas such as the North Atlantic ocean and/or various oilfields, it now seems plausible that Viasat will seek to challenge Inmarsat’s Global Xpress project directly, in several of its Inmarsat’s planned target markets (government, energy and maritime).
This would not be particularly surprising, because it is our understanding that (despite significant efforts earlier in the year) Viasat is not on the list of bidders for the Global Xpress ground infrastructure contract, which Inmarsat is expected to award early next year (and for which bids were received in mid-October). Inmarsat has a major advantage in that Global Xpress will provide coverage around the world, including hotspots for UAV demand such as Afghanistan. However, Viasat has dramatically more capacity on its satellite and so it could potentially cherry pick some high revenue opportunities in North America and the surrounding areas.
On balance I think Inmarsat is better placed to win this battle, because we have projected for many years that the satellite consumer broadband market would not live up to Viasat’s very high expectations. Indeed I still expect that the most that Viasat and Hughes can hope for in the North American consumer broadband market is 2-3 million customers between them, with growth stalling in 3-4 years time as terrestrial buildout continues. Fundamentally, I have a hard time seeing satellite broadband as anything other than a last resort technology, however much capacity Viasat throws at the customer, because the constraining factor is the need to install a relatively costly terminal, which then requires ARPUs of $50 per month and up, far above expectations for terrestrial alternatives (especially in less wealthy rural areas).
As a result, Viasat could well be left with excess capacity if it does decide to contract for Viasat-2 before Viasat-1 has proved its commercial potential, as was stated on the call. Of course that could lead to some destructive price cutting to capture the limited number of regional customer opportunities, but just as in the MSS market when regional players have made inroads in certain areas, Inmarsat could well emerge relatively unscathed.
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06.24.10
Posted in Broadband, Financials, Inmarsat, Maritime, Operators, VSAT at 5:12 pm by timfarrar
In recent discussions we’ve heard rumors that Inmarsat may soon make a bid to take over Thrane & Thrane, its biggest equipment supplier. Inmarsat has certainly been in acquisition mode over the last year, taking over Stratos and Segovia and investing in SkyWave. Nevertheless, such a move would still be quite a shock for many in the MSS industry.
However, it would be a logical accompaniment to Inmarsat’s Ka-band strategy: Inmarsat would be able to reduce the price of L-band equipment (particularly FleetBroadband terminals) and thereby help to fend off the threat from Ku-band VSAT for the next few years until its new Ka-band satellites are in orbit. Thrane could also play an important role in development of mobile Ka-band terminals, which are clearly the biggest technical risk in Inmarsat’s entire Ka-band plan.
Though the threat from Ku-band has been hyped up recently, most notably in Comsys’s recent maritime VSAT report, our view continues to be that L-band has a very sustainable market position, outside the highest spending ships. To date, Ku-band VSATs have achieved only limited penetration within Inmarsat’s core maritime commercial transportation market (which incidentally is much smaller than 100,000 ships), and most of these ships spend far too little to ever contemplate a move to VSAT.
By reducing the cost of L-band equipment, in concert with its aggressive moves on airtime pricing over the last year, Inmarsat has a very viable opportunity to hold off Ku-band VSAT incursion. Even the recent concerns about shortfalls in Inmarsat’s maritime revenue growth during the first quarter of 2010 appear to stem much more from the price reductions that Inmarsat and its distributors have used to remain competitive on high spending vessels, rather than any substantial loss of market share to VSAT in the commercial transportation business. Indeed many maritime VSAT service providers had a very disappointing year in 2009, and quite a number of them are now up for sale, in what we would view as an attempt to exploit the perception of rapid future market growth before they actually need to fulfill these expectations.
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06.02.10
Posted in Aeronautical, Broadband, Financials, Globalstar, Handheld, Inmarsat, Iridium, Maritime, Operators, Services, VSAT at 2:57 pm by timfarrar
So Iridium has finally announced the contract to build its NEXT satellites, which was won by Thales Alenia Space (TAS) with the support of a stunning $1.8B loan package which will be 95% guaranteed by COFACE, the French Export Credit Agency (ECA). By the sound of it, Lockheed had been confident of winning the contract, but the US Ex-Im Bank simply couldn’t match the level of support offered by COFACE.
Even Iridium appears surprised by the $1.8B Promise of Guarantee, given the suggestions in their March 2010 results call that the company would need to raise additional unsecured or subordinated debt in the public market. We had expected Iridium might need to raise $300M or more in backstop financing, based on Iridium’s April 2010 investor presentation which stated that the company was “seeking support for a[n ECA] facility of approximately $1.5B”. COFACE’s additional support therefore clearly appears to have tipped the balance in favor of TAS, because it removes the risk that Iridium would have faced in trying to tap the public markets at this point in time.
We now expect Globalstar to point out that Iridium has received an even more favorable financing package than Globalstar did last year (when Thermo was required to provide additional backstop funding as a condition of the $586M COFACE-backed facility) and potentially to seek a $200M+ extension of its current facility. This would provide funding so Globalstar could exercise its option to purchase the last 24 second generation satellites, allowing them to add more satellites to their constellation before NEXT becomes operational (and before radiation problems are expected to start impacting their 8 first generation spares in about 2015). Such a facility could also give Globalstar more firepower to market its new second generation services in 2011 and 2012, without the risk of eating into the contingent equity and debt service reserve accounts previously established by Thermo.
The next stage in this war of the Export Credit Agencies may then come in the shape of Inmarsat’s upcoming Ka-band constellation, which we expect to involve 3 or 4 dedicated Ka-band satellites (costing at least $200M each including launch and insurance), providing oceanic coverage to complement and extend its existing FleetBroadband and SwiftBroadband services. With Inmarsat’s new satellites expected to be deployed between 2013 and 2015, an order could well come as soon as this summer, when Inmarsat announces its investor guidance for the next five years. More details of Inmarsat’s plans and our expectations for their future Ka-band revenues were given in the March 2010 report, available to subscribers to our MSS information service.
The competition to build Inmarsat’s new satellites appears once again to be shaping up as a US vs European battle with TAS, SS/L and Astrium all bidding for the contract. Will ECA financing once again prove to be a key factor in the decision, even though Inmarsat has much less need for a guarantee than Iridium and Globalstar? Certainly Inmarsat has not been reluctant to seek cheap government-backed funding when it is available, as seen in its recent European Investment Bank loan to fund the Alphasat project.
In summary, its clear that ECA financing is now going to play a very substantial role in supporting the MSS industry. As a result, the prospects for a long awaited consolidation of the sector appear to be diminishing. That is certainly good news for end users of MSS, as well as service providers and distributors, who will be able to take advantage of an increasing range of competitive alternatives. This is particularly true in the maritime and aeronautical markets, where Iridium is really the only potential MSS competitor for Inmarsat. Indeed Iridium’s ability to serve these markets gives it a much more sustainable long term position than some other systems, because most maritime and aeronautical opportunities are much less likely to be undermined by the buildout of terrestrial wireless systems.
Nevertheless, it also seems hard to justify the $8B+ of capital investment that has been committed by Iridium, Globalstar and all of the other players (Iridium NEXT, Globalstar 2, Inmarsat 4, Orbcomm, ICO/DBSD, SkyTerra and TerreStar) in an industry sector which only generated $1.1B in wholesale service revenues in 2009, and though growing healthily, doesn’t appear poised to breakout from the 8% annual growth rate seen in recent years. Unless new sources of value appear (spectrum monetization being the obvious option for several players) it appears unlikely that all of the MSS operators will be as successful as they and their investors hope.
Indeed the main story of the next decade is likely to be the competition between Iridium and Globalstar, as they both strive to be the second biggest player in an MSS market that will continue to be dominated by Inmarsat, while other providers may fall by the wayside. If Iridium can grow from its current 19% share of wholesale service revenues to about a 25% market share, or Globalstar can grow from its current 5% share to 15% or more (based on its lower cost satellite system), then that should be sufficient to achieve an attractive return on capital for either company. However, with Inmarsat holding a more than 60% market share today, it appears unlikely that both Iridium and Globalstar could achieve this level of success simultaneously.
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12.14.09
Posted in Aeronautical, Broadband, Financials, Inmarsat, Operators, Services at 5:24 pm by timfarrar
Since we last wrote on the topic in September, skepticism about the future of in-flight Internet services has become even more widespread, and recently disclosed usage data from Aircell has not been particularly impressive – roughly 100K sessions per week (of which only a fraction are paid for), equating to about a 5% take rate on equipped aircraft.
The good news is that Aircell is now touting the “operational applications” of in-flight Internet: the obvious corollary being that it is going to try and extract some money from airlines to pay for these benefits, as we suggested it would have to back in September.
The bad news is that the business case for Row44′s Ku-band service looks even more questionable than we had suspected, and it faces a near term deadline (we understand January 2010) from Southwest to secure $100M+ of funding for its planned fleetwide rollout. We have been told that the Southwest-Row44 agreement calls for Southwest to pay Row44 a fee of $0.25 per passenger flown on each equipped aircraft, whether or not they use the service, and Southwest will then mostly likely give the connectivity away for free. With Southwest carrying about 170K passengers per plane per year, that would mean Row44 receiving just over $40K per plane per year (about $22M per year in total once fleetwide installation is complete), which it hopes to supplement with advertising revenue. However, we are doubtful that a dramatic increase could be realized from advertising: for example according to a recent article, in-flight magazines generate an average of about $1M per airline per year in gross advertising revenue, and a large airline such as Southwest would presumably therefore generate in the high single digit millions of dollars from its magazine. Given the lack of technology (and power outlets) required to read the magazine, then even if Southwest gives away the Row44 service for free, usage would be far less than the 80% of passengers that read the in-flight magazine, and we would view it as unlikely that advertising revenue could add more than a few million dollars to Row44′s income.
More to the point, a free service will put an unsustainably costly load on the Row44 network: we believe this was originally designed with an expectation of loading 100 planes onto each transponder (which can provide 18Mbps of capacity), but if 25% of passengers used the network for streaming video, and other high bandwidth applications (remember that these were the primary selling point of Row44′s solution compared to Aircell), then it is quite possible that 1 transponder would be needed for every 20-30 planes. With each transponder costing about $1.25M, Row44 could find itself coming close to spending all of the revenue from Southwest on bandwidth and never making any margin to even begin to pay for the $100M+ of equipment that it would have installed.
In this context, it is far from clear that a sustainable business model is available for large scale Ku-band passenger communications deployments (although a limited Panasonic service on Lufthansa could be viable, assuming Panasonic has some form of revenue sharing agreement with Intelsat and initial installations rely on the old Connexion antennas). Certainly it appears that Viasat, which was the primary equipment supplier to Connexion-by-Boeing (and was rumored to be in pole position to secure a deal with Lufthansa, prior to its recent shift to Panasonic) is emphasizing the lower cost of Ka-band capacity over a Ku-band only model for mobility services. Intriguingly, even Inmarsat may agree that Ka-band is the future: we understand that it has recently issued an RFI for one or more Ka-band satellites, which are likely to be part of its planned roadmap for future government and/or aero services (e.g. UAVs).
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