Over the 12 months, the Satcoms Innovation group has had a busy and insightful year.
We have had the pleasure of welcoming two new members, NetView and Starwin and with travel restrictions now lifted, we have been glad to see the return of workshops tradeshows and events.
The Satcoms Innovation Group is all about bringing together the technical operations people from across the industry, so being able to get them back in a room together has been invaluable, even though we had a relatively active online agenda during covid.
The year kicked off with our managing director Helen Weedon heading to Luxembourg to moderate a panel at GovSatCom. Helen was joined by industry experts, Dave Davis of ST Engineering iDirect, Russ Hogan of GovSat, Karl of SES Global Services, and Eutelsat’s Andreas Voigt to discuss the transition to a more hybrid, integrated, and flexible form of service delivery within the next five years.
Helen then went on to moderate two sessions at CABSAT. For the 5G session Helen was joined by our Board Member, Arabsat’s Yasir Hassan, Richard Swardh, of Comtech, Fabrizio de Paolis of the European Space Agency, and Etisalat’s Ahmed Almaazmi.
For the Second session, our members Alvaro Sanchez of Integrasys and Bruno Dupas of Kratos joined Helen to discuss Cloud-enabled satellite.
This year also saw the return of our in person workshops. Micro-Ant hosted our first workshop of 2022 in Jacksonville, Florida and the second was held at the SES headquarters in Luxembourg. It was so nice to see everyone in person again after all the disruption and complications that came with the pandemic.
At both workshops, we covered our current working group activity which are looking at 5G, cloud-enabled satellite, flat panel antennas, and of course interference. At SES there were definitely some common themes emerging, namely the need for interoperability, standards, and for the industry to work together.
SIG working groups
Our working groups have been busy discussing and coming up with new ways to approach current challenges and opportunities, including flat panel antennas, interference, cloud-enabled satellite, and 5G.
The 5G working group recently concluded that the risk of interference to satellite systems from 5G is, although real, controlled and being effectively resolved on a case-by-case basis by satellite operators and affected clients.
As we get to the end of the year, we are looking forward to an exciting year ahead and seeing all of our SIG members again at various events including Govsatcom, CABSAT, Satellite 2023.
The first SIG workshop of the year will be hosted in partnership with Intelsat in Washington D.C. 16th-17thMarch.
The SIG Awards
2023 will also see the return of the SIG Awards to celebrate the innovative technologies and solutions being delivered by our members to help the industry adapt. Award categories and previous winners include:
- Innovation of the Year, Previous winners: MicroAnt – 2022 and QuadSAT – 2020.
- Educational Project of the Year Previous winners: Spacewell Cornwall – 2022 and
The Auckland Programme for Space Systems, Te Pūnaha Ātea Auckland Space Institute – 2020
- Cooperation Award – Previous winners:
Kacific Broadband Satellites Ltd and GuarantCo Ltd – 2022 and QuadSAT and ESA/GVF – 2020 - Young Engineer of the Year Previous winners: Joakim Espeland, CEO, QuadSAT – 2022 and James Pester, Shaftesbury School – 2020
If you think you have what it takes to be a winner in 2023, please submit your nominations by 6th January 2023. Winners will be announced at the SIG Workshop, taking place at Intelsat in Washington D.C. on 16thand 17th March.
We look forward to seeing you all in 2023, but in the meantime we would like to wish all of our members, partners, and industry friends a very Happy Holidays.