Home >> News: July 6th, 2018 >> Story
Satnews Daily
July 6th, 2018

By 2027, According to NSR, Maritime SATCOM Markets will Generate Billions in Annual Revenues


NSR’s Maritime SATCOM Markets, 6th Edition report forecasts Maritime SATCOM will generate $36 billion in cumulative revenues through 2027.

Driven by the migration of unconnected vessels to MSS, MSS customers to VSAT, and VSAT vessels to even higher throughputs, revenue growth will approach 7 percent from 2017 to 2027.

Maritime SATCOM Markets will demand more than 670 Gbps of throughput by 2027 — 26 percent from FSS and HTS GEO, and 74 percent from Non-GEO.  As LEO comes online in the latter half of the forecast and SES’s O3b transitions to mPower in MEO, there is a huge amount of capacity coming online — pushing prices down and unlocking additional demand in key markets.

Merchant, leisure, and fishing markets will largely remain on GEO connectivity, as outside Super Yachts they do not yet have the significant levels of demand and/or budgets for the hundreds of Mbps per site from Non-GEO.  Offshore faces stiff competition from terrestrial and ongoing pressures to keep budgets in-check, while the demand for passenger connectivity is ever-constant.

Overall, with another $2.5 billion in revenue growth between 2017 and 2027 and another 45,000 vessels adopting broadband SATCOM capability over the next ten years, there is a strong demand for throughput in all orbits, frequencies, and form-factors.

Brad Grady, Senior Analyst and the reports author, noted that insatiable demand for connectivity is driving the market today. Be it adopting Broadband Connectivity to extremely high bandwidth demand found in some of the largest ocean-going cruise ships in the world, the impact of newer connectivity options in GEO and Non-GEO are having a profound impact on the market. FSS will still play a significant role in enabling a highly reliable, globally available network — but, the demand for higher throughputs combined with high vessel density in areas like the Caribbean are shifting network designs towards GEO & Non-GEO HTS options.  At the lower end, new offerings in the MSS form factors are expanding the bottom of the market — bringing new vessels into service.