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“We’re not after building the best satellite system. We’re after building the best overall network that just happens to connect over satellite,” says Andrew Nuttall, co-founder of Skylo
As more operators pilot non-terrestrial network (NTN) services aiming to claim larger coverage areas to meet overwhelming customer demands, the industry is waking up to a new reality. Increasingly, the convergence of terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks is revealing a fragmented ecosystem whose biggest challenge is not technology, but interoperability.
According to Andrew Nuttall, cofounder and chief technology officer of Skylo, the future success of NTN will depend less on proprietary technologies and more on ecosystem alignment and integration.
Speaking on Pulse this week, Nuttall said, “When you think about satellite connectivity, phones have been connecting over satellites for decades now at this point. There’s nothing particularly new about it. But what the NTN ecosystem is bringing is this vast increase in accessibility to satellite. So the real challenge is how do you drive accessibility?”
Historically, satellite networks have been engineered with separate waveforms, terminals, and traffic models, making satellite a vertical ecosystem. Terrestrial networks by contrast are more mature, and make a horizontal and globally interoperable with standards-based interfaces, roaming frameworks, and compatible devices.
Ongoing efforts by rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), Mobile Satellite Services Association (MSSA), and other industry bodies are aiming to accelerate the integration between the two ecosystems to make the NTN value chain from satellites to ground infrastructure more open and interoperable. The goal is to deliver a “converged experience” where networks seamlessly switch between terrestrial and satellite connectivity without users noticing.
“As you and I go through our days, we’re not paying attention to whether our phones are connected to Wi-Fi or cellular. That’s not an expectation that we have. And for satellite to truly scale, you have to continue to have that expectation,” Nuttall said.
However, achieving that convergence is by no means a small feat. It requires multiple building blocks, including infrastructure, spectrum coordination, device integration, and operator partnerships, to work together seamlessly.
This is where standards-based architectures play an outsize role. “You have to be standards-based on your interfaces, when interoperating with other folks, because that’s how you scale the ecosystem,” Nuttall said.
He also acknowledged that there is a place for proprietary innovation within individual networks and device implementations, but argued that interfaces between operators, vendors, and platforms need to be standardized for NTN to become a mainstream extension of the cellular infrastructure.
Another important piece of the puzzle is device compatibility. Skylo is working with chipset, device, and module manufacturers and runs a certification program to expand support and compatibility so that devices can connect to satellite networks unmodified.
Although early NTN deployments are focused primarily on emergency and basic messaging services, consumer expectations are growing parallel to satellite infrastructure and device compatibility. That begs the question if satellite connectivity will eventually catch up to terrestrial network services in performance and coverage. Nuttall sees a hybrid connectivity layer shaping out in the future where both networks are leveraged as required.
“Satellite will never be able to replace the terrestrial network. It just doesn’t have the same capabilities, scaling, etc.. But [it] doesn’t have to. What the world is interested in is a truly hybrid network that just works everywhere, anywhere, always. And in that case, users will likely be on the cellular network or their Wi-Fi network 98% of the time. But that 2 % of the time that they’re on the satellite network, their experience can’t change,” he said.
