AIAA-2002-1864

THREE GROWTH ENGINES FOR SATELLITE SYSTEMS

D.K.Sachdev

SpaceTel Consultancy Vienna, Virginia 22182, USA

ABSTRACT

With tens of terabytes of optical fiber capacity soon becoming a reality on the one hand, and a few recent financial failures on the other, there is once again some pessimism about the future of satellite systems. The proven way to get out of such pessimism in most businesses is to try to focus on growth engines with some credibility. This paper discusses three such business sectors. A common factor for all the three growth sectors is that they are all consumer-oriented businesses, requiring a management mindset quite different from that businesses the industry grew up with, such as trunking, TV distribution, VSAT etc.

INTRODUCTION

Satellite technology is now over half a century old and over this time there have been the inevitable ups and downs. More recently, the satellite industry added a few missteps of its own to the general telecom/dotcom downturn and made matters much more pessimistic than should have been. Nevertheless, the underlying technology is by no means saturated or up against the wall. On the contrary, new developments in basic devices, subsystems and services continue to emerge unabated. Like for any other industry with a long history of success based on innovation and perseverance, the way out of the hole is to first identify and recognize the fundamental changes in business environment and then to concentrate on the major drivers, or growth engines, with the potential to create and nurture successful enterprises in the coming decades. During the first few decades, the satellites were essentially used for trunking for telecommunication networks and for distribution for the broadcast industry. Direct access to the final user was still some years away, mainly due to technological limitations, principally satellite power, but also due to structural

reasons associated with government-owned telecommunication networks. Within these constraints, the industry and the operating agencies grew at an impressive rate even during and after the rather impressive debut of large capacity cables in the late 1980s. The first successful foray in direct consumer access was through direct broadcast of television. As we will see later, this was not achieved easily and needed several iterations and disappointments, before sustained success was achieved. The second major entry in the direct consumer access turned out to be a major setback. This of course was the set of bold initiatives to provide truly ubiquitous mobile service, instead of just to ships. The reasons behind these setbacks have been analyzed from practically every perspective. Most of these analyses end up blaming the choice of lower orbits, which in turn needed very large investments upfront. In author’s view, these unfortunate experiences were part of the learning process as the industry began to grow out of the relatively sheltered trunking and distribution markets and stepped into the blazing sun of the directly scrutinized markets for consumer services.

DIRECT CONSUMER SERVICES:

A NEW BUSINESS PARADIGM

The powerful point-to-multipoint capabilities intrinsic to the satellite medium have been recognized from the very beginning. Once the technological limitations in both the space and ground segment had been overcome to a certain degree, a number of new ventures were set up to exploit these capabilities for direct consumer service. As mentioned above, some succeeded, others did not. Given the almost exponential growth in the capabilities of optical fiber systems, it is very likely that

20th AIAA International Communication Satellite Systems Conference and Exhibit12-15 May 2002, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

AIAA 2002-1864

Copyright © 2002 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.

the bulk of the industry growth going forward will in fact come from consumer services based on the unique point-to-multipoint capabilities of the satellite medium. It is therefore imperative to adopt the business fundamentals associated with successful consumer sectors. Last year, I had a couple of opportunities (1,2) to develop some general business-oriented principles for satellite-based systems for direct consumer services. As these are pertinent to the services discussed later in this paper, these perhaps deserve another look. 1) If you are in consumer business, start with the

consumer.

Sounds simple and obvious, doesn’t it? However, most such projects still start with the satellites, often with many bells and whistles not always justified business-wise. The consumer equipment comes later, often when it is too late to make significant architectural changes in the satellite payload. If the consumer equipment turns out to be too expensive or too bulky, the whole business plan could be in serious trouble. Remember in a truly successful business of this kind, the largest cumulative cost element is in the consumer equipment and in operations. If you look back, you will no doubt identify your own examples. So what is a better approach, business-wise? First progress the user equipment in accordance with market surveys for the specific service up to point where its cost, features and market acceptability can be assessed with some accuracy. Conduct a detailed parametric analysis for the total system cost on the basis of the latest market dynamics, user equipment, operations and total life cycle costs. Optimize the satellite design to match the best business scenario and with acceptable technical and financial risk. Paraphrasing the legendary Louis V. Gerstner, build the satellites from the customer back and not from the satellite out. 2) Reduce the lead times as much as possible or your business plan will become somebody else’s. This lesson was unfortunately driven home hard by the Iridium system. When the basic Iridium concepts were announced, cellular phone systems had barely started. It was expected that the global deployment of a purely satellite-based system would be much faster than the installation of all the cellular towers needed to cover the landmasses around the world, mostly by the traditionally slow PTTs. However, the Iridium system took almost 8 years to complete; when it was finally announced “ready”, the handsets came late, were bulky and expensive and the per-minute cost was way too high. As a result, a really innovative system paradigm

had practically no chance of survival against the cell-phones that were by then fast becoming ubiquitous. Business plans are of course always time-sensitive; this is especially the case for a brand new application or service for the individual buyers. This is where systems that grow with the customer in a modular fashion have a much lower financial risk exposure and therefore a much better chance of adapting to changing conditions than architectures that require all the expensive assets deployed all at once at the start of a new business.. 3) Unless you have positive solid confirmation of the business over the satellites’ lifetime, avoid making non-fungible satellites. This one always creates a debate and in fact may not be universally applicable. Onboard processing techniques, for example, can, in principle, give an important competitive advantage. Unfortunately, these benefits come with making the space segment application-specific, substantially increasing the risk against market volatility. Over the years, the satellite systems have achieved impressive fill-factors. These can be at least partly attributed to the transparent bent-pipe transponders with wide-area coverage, features that provided valuable insurance against changing market conditions. Not all transparent systems are fully fungible, but they have a better chance of adapting to unforeseen market swings over the long lifetimes of today’s satellites. With some ingenuity, several systems have kept the processing on the ground, thus getting benefits of processing without loosing the fungibility of expensive assets. In general, a second-generation system has a much lower risk with non-fungible assets in space than the very first entry. If your marketing forecast is “in the lock-box”, and you can get the system off the ground quickly, go ahead and design the application specific satellite. But keep in mind that a well-loaded satellite with a few db less efficiency is much better investment bet than a super-efficient empty satellite. 4) A successful business model in one part of the world can fail elsewhere. Satellite systems have traditionally achieved impressive manufacturing costs learning-curve benefits through a series of identical or nearly identical satellites. This has been the practice with international systems in particular. In such organizations however, the overall accounting tends to blur the fact that some of the satellites do not really match the market conditions in different parts of the world.

However, for systems planned for direct consumer services, the economic risks are far greater than for trunking services. For example, the market sensitivity to a common consumer equipment price across the globe can be very diverse from one region to another. Therefore, while the link budgets are the same everywhere, the business models may not be. What looks cash flow positive in an affluent part of the world, can be a financial liability in another continent. Therefore, while there could be tangible synergy and economic benefits in developing a global system, the applicable business models can be very regional if not local. These should be addressed upfront and weighed against the initial development costs.

GROWTH ENGINES FOR THE SATELLITE INDUSTRY

Satellite systems around the world provide a whole range of services for telecommunications, broadcasting, Internet and several other specialized fields. These will no doubt continue. From amongst these, three areas have been identified which have the potential to sustain the growth of the industry in the coming decade or two. These are:

• Direct-to-Home Television (DTH-TV)

• Direct Radio Broadcast

• Two-way Internet Service

DTH TELEVISION BROADCAST SERVICES

Of the three, this sector is the most developed. However, this success did not come easy and was achieved only after several painstaking iterations. Serious efforts for DTH-TV started in the 1970s on both sides of the Atlantic. The proven broadcast technique was analog, requiring 27 MHz RF bandwidth per channel and extremely high satellite EIRP levels, about 65dbW. The net result was that only about 3 to 5 channels covering a medium size market could be accommodated on even the largest available spacecraft bus. The first such system was a joint German-French program, TDF, and required significant efforts for the qualification of high power TWTAs. This program took much longer than planned and two such satellites were eventually launched in late 80s. While such limited capacity programs on both side of the Atlantic were solving their technical and other

problems, the DTH planners had to resolve associated thorny political issues, primarily arising from apprehensions around the world of the “big brother” broadcasters reaching directly millions of homes across national boundaries. Furthermore, there was concern that developing countries would be left with no spectrum when they got around to investing in their own national broadcast systems. The solution finally adopted led to a “planned orbit” where each nation was allocated a certain number of channels in the appropriate portion of the suitable arc in a band exclusively set aside for satellite broadcasting. Concurrent with this detailed spectrum planning, better receiver technology and some more innovative link budgets began to substantially lower the technical barriers to DTH, to the extent that medium power traditional “fixed service” transponders could provide DTH-TV with small dishes over reasonable size coverage areas. This trend was pioneered by Astra in Europe and moved quickly elsewhere. The channels were still analog, but a larger number could be provided with medium power satellites than with the earlier “true” DTH satellites. This approach was so successful that additional satellites operating in different segments of the nominal 11GHz band were collocated as needed to meet market demands. This approach continues into the future today. While such tens of analog satellite channels were adequate for several markets, they still could not compete against much larger number provided by cable-TV systems. Two almost simultaneous advances enabled realization of much higher capacities for satellite systems and also at an affordable cost to the consumer. The first was digital compression that now enabled several TV programs to be squeezed into a single transponder without too much impact on subjective reception quality. The second was the feasibility of ASIC chipsets for the home receivers. These developments finally made DTH-TV with several tens of channels a reality. Today, DTH-TV is already a growth engine in several parts of the world. In 2000, worldwide there were nearly 6500 transponders of all kinds. Over 50% of these were in Ku-band. Of these nearly one-third are for video. Nevertheless, DTH-TV is still largely a developed world service. On both sides of the Atlantic, there are competing DTH operators, Astra and Eutelsat in Europe and EchoStar and DirecTv in the US. Other countries with growing DTH-TV include Japan and several in Latin America.

In summary, it is fair to say that DTH-TV has finally arrived as a successful consumer business via satellites. Lets see how it stacks up against the general principles listed in previous paragraph for consumer services. Starting with systems like Astra, all successful DTH-TV systems have indeed given high importance to customers’ needs. Significant investments were made in ASIC chipset development to make the ground equipment affordable in the target markets. Until the service had grown enough, traditional transparent transponders were used wherever possible, thus minimizing risk of non-fungible assets for a new service. Even after the market had grown, modular addition of collocated satellites has spread the investments to match revenue growths. The financial markets have recognized these sound business management practices through respectable market capitalization. Once having established their markets, the established operators are now moving towards spot-beam architectures to cater to local content in each beam area. Finally, how strong is this growth engine for the future? • Despite its impressive growth, DTH-TV has still

not captured significant markets in developing countries. This is in part due to the old “big brother” factor that may not easily go away, particularly in the post-September 11 environments. A more clearly identifiable factor is the cost of the consumer equipment. While this is often given away in developed markets against long-term service contracts, their costs are still too high a barrier-to-entry in several developing markets particularly when compared to cable-TV. These costs must be brought down substantially through low-cost production and a fresh look at the overall system design, starting with consumer needs in each and every specific market.

• DTH-TV continues to be in the middle of the ongoing fascination in the satellite and allied industries to be the information hub in every home. Apart from DTH-TV operators, the other players in the race include cable-TV operators, computer manufacturers and online services operators like AOL, MSN and others. The so-called imminent arrival of set-top boxes has been around the corner for much too long and often tends to divert the attention from the core business fundamentals for individual services. Every year or so, we are told that the ultimate universal box has finally arrived and this year’s consumer show was no exception. While the motivation to expand an established market is well justified, we should not lose sight of

the fact that the two-way services make significantly different demands on the space segment than pure broadcast services. This ongoing fascination with the illusive set-top boxes has the potential of making the core DTH-TV services more expensive than they need to be.

SATELLITE DIGITAL RADIO

Radio is what started it all, over a century ago, for the electronics, wireless, telecommunications and entertainment industries. Yet in the DTH field, satellite radio was a latecomer compared to TV. There were two reasons for this time lag. In the developed world, radio was perceived as a way of getting information and entertainment while doing other things at home, office or in the car. The thousands of local radio stations serving these sizeable markets developed a vested interest in maintaining this status quo and did not quite relish a big area-wide system eroding their individually captive markets. In the developing world, in addition to the above local mode, there has been a longstanding but small market for short wave radio for bringing news and other features, mostly state-sponsored, from distant and developed areas. The technical quality of these broadcasts has always been very marginal and was identified early enough as an ideal candidate for replacement by much higher quality and stable satellite-based radio systems. However, this transition lacked the business impetus since majority of these activities were government-owned with proverbially limited budgets. So what finally unlocked this stalemate to make satellite radio a reality? Three factors deserve special mention. The first development was a new spectrum allocation in 1992. The issues were somewhat different from those faced by DTH-TV. After considerable debate, three segments in L and S-bands were designated for digital radio. The allocations in the L-band were on a shared basis with existing services, thus putting an upper limit on the radiated power. All the allocations were to be further shared between terrestrial and satellite parts of the digital radio systems. The second was a major technological push, largely from several European research and industrial organizations, to make digital radio work satisfactorily in multipath environments. The underlying technologies were developed under the aegis of the now well-known Eureka 147 program. These efforts were successful and led to several terrestrial single-frequency networks in different parts of Europe. It was well

recognized that a wide-area operation would require a hybrid solution with satellites covering the sparsely populated areas and terrestrial networks catering to urban areas. However, the satellite part encountered some concerns. These included considerable back-off requirements for Eureka 147 waveform leading to uneconomic satellite payload design and genuine concerns about relatively low elevation angles in Europe from the geostationary orbit. The third development was the start of a satellite-based digital radio system for the developing countries by a new company, WorldSpace. This project was initially targeted at Africa with a view to bridge an awesome information gap in remote and less developed areas. The system adopted the well-known TDM/QPSK downlink format instead of the Eureka 147 waveform in order to realize an economical satellite design. Due to significantly lower multipath concerns in sparsely- populated areas and high elevation angles, this change was acceptable from performance point of view. The WorldSpace system concept was soon extended to both Asia and Latin America with a common spacecraft design. At the time of writing this paper, the WorldSpace system is operational in Africa and Asia with several uplink stations in the two continents. Several versions of portable receivers are being marketed. In the United States, several proposals were put forward in the early 1990s concurrently with the ITU spectrum allocations. However, it was only in 1997 that FCC finally awarded two slices of S-band spectrum to two of the contenders, now known as XM Radio and Sirius Radio respectively. Both systems are operational at this time. Unlike the shared allocation in L-band, the US allocations in S-band are exclusive to digital radio. This has enabled the system design to take full advantage of the concurrent advances in spacecraft bus power capabilities. Even more notable is the fact that, taken together, the two systems have made good and effective use of practically all the preceding efforts in this field. The XM Radio system uses two operational geostationary satellites in a simultaneous space and time diversity modes. Use of the established QPSK technology in the downlink for areas with minimal multipath made full use of previously established hardware. For urban areas, it adopts the proven COFDM multipath capabilities via the proprietary MCM system. On similar lines, the Sirius system has taken full advantage of the prior work on non-geostationary orbits to improve elevation angles for

northern locations. It has three satellites in the Tundra orbit, and covers the entire United States at high elevation angles. Due to this feature, it envisions lesser number of terrestrial repeaters than for the XM system. The Sirius repeaters also use a version of COFDM to counter multipath effects. The initial results from the US systems are very encouraging indeed both in terms of technical performance and market acceptance. Japan has just ordered a system of its own and Europe is seriously evaluating viable hybrid options for its region. By and large the operating digital radio systems vindicate the direct consumer service principles. The system designs have given high importance to the consumer equipment right from the start. In terms of meeting consumer price barriers, the WorldSpace system has faced a far more difficult challenge. In developing countries, a stand-alone portable radio faces a significantly higher price resistance than the add-on of a satellite radio to a $20,000+ car in the US consumer market. On the other hand, the US systems have to compete with fairly attractive media alternatives, such as FM Radio, CD players, available in a good part of the market area without any monthly subscription. Overall, it is the quality and uniqueness of the content that may dictate the market shares. All the satellites in the above three digital radio systems in operation today are unique to digital radio and are almost totally non-fungible. Any alternative use, while technically plausible, runs into the limitation of relatively small bandwidth in most scenarios. This is an economic risk all the systems had to take to move into their respect virgin market territories. On the positive note all the programs started pretty much on time with only modest delays. The WorldSpace system does use identical systems in three regions; however these are by and large developing regions and thus the applicable business plans are not too dissimilar. So is digital radio also growth engine for the satellite industry?

• Both the ITU allocations in L- an S-band are viable for digital radio for terrestrial and satellite broadcasts. Dedicated S-band allocations in the US are attractive; on the other hand this band needs more power margin.

• Unlike television, digital radio did not start with an installed base. This has created during the initial phases a challenge in terms of early advertising revenues until a certain minimum

threshold is reached in terms of number of listeners.

• Subscription services are the main revenue option in the beginning. However, for an audience used to free radio, initial customer resistance can be expected and could be countered with unique and ubiquitous content.

• Will we see real growth in new markets for this segment? Japan is already on the way and Europe will certainly expand with a satellite option. The developing countries in Asia and Africa already have the portable option and there is a definite market for automobiles, not throughout but perhaps in specific urban areas.

• Through the OEM channel, we will soon see an effort to create synergy between other electronics, entertainment and communication systems in the car, somewhat akin to the set-top box fascination for DTH-TV . Will this change next generation digital radio systems? Will two-way capabilities in the automobiles need a fresh thinking in system design? Too early to guess; however the nearly $ 4 billion upfront investments already made in the three systems need undivided attention to make current systems an economic success before getting digressed by benefits of convergence.

• Taking the sum total of the experiences to date, satellite digital radio can indeed be a growth engine for coming decades, provided customer-based business models prevail.

INTERNET VIA SATELLITES

In the foreseeable future, the success of practically any consumer-oriented telecommunication or broadcasting system is likely to be judged by its direct or indirect relevance to Internet. No wonder the satellite systems and the associated industries are all aggressively trying to be an integral part of this axiom. To the extent that the Internet backbone network is resident on global telecommunication networks, international satellites are already providing Internet-related services. Many destinations in the developing world get their Internet portals via satellites. This is already a significant and steady revenue stream and can be expected to continue to grow in the foreseeable future.

The second role or niche that several new satellite-based enterprises have developed has come to be known as “broadcasting-to-the edge” service. National and international switched networks often encounter serious congestion particularly at times of popular media-casts over Internet. Today’s satellites through their multi-destination links not only relieve such network congestions, but in nominal conditions they have also proven to be a more efficient means of transmitting large identical files for rich media content to several tens of ISPs. This part of the business has seen some ups and downs of late but can be expected to continue in some form or other. The real competitive battleground in the Internet world however, is what is more commonly referred to as Broadband, or direct provision of high-speed two-way links to homes (DTH-I) and small and large businesses. The competitive media here are DSL, high-speed modems over cable-TV systems, satellites and wireless. On the face of it, DSL should take away most of the market since it utilizes the ubiquitous copper telephone wires entering our homes. However, current state-of-the-art permits such services only within a certain distance from the telephone exchanges. Cable modems are rapidly becoming attractive options. However, the penetration of cable-TV systems varies considerably in different parts of the world. In this respect, the US market with nearly 70% homes on cable-TV routes is the hardest to penetrate for other media. Wireless technology is building some attractive niches in high-speed Internet markets. These range from wireless LANs within individual homes or business premises to all the way for easy access at airports and other public places. Credit is due here to the rapid development of a standards keeping pace with maturing capabilities. However, until some entrepreneur stitches these nodes into area-wide networks, wireless remains a good niche service in specific bounded areas. Judging by the above short summary, one would conclude that a ubiquitous medium like satellites should become a dominant alternative by accessing all users. In fact this could be a really strong growth engine. Lets first look at the efforts underway to achieve this goal. The first group of DTH-I operators, already out of the gate, are piggybacking their service on DTH-TV. In principle, all they had to do was to allocate part of the some 300 or more Mbps TV downlink resource to Internet forward link for downloading by the users. In practice, for capacity and other reasons, they often end up using another nearby satellite for the downlink. The return link initially was only through a dial-up phone

line accessing an ISP. In addition to the significant costs for the new equipment and service, the users still had to continue to pay for the dial up ISP and phone line as before. Nevertheless, this is a good start and a placeholder for satellites in the broadband sweepstakes. The above operators have now upgraded their DTH-I offerings to genuine two-way through satellites. Each user now has a small Ku-band uplink accessing a separate dedicated return-link capacity or a full transponder. The extra running cost of the return transponder is currently controlling the operating economics of the entrepreneurs. In addition, the user equipment is not only even more expensive, but now has to meet uplink clearance requirements at millions of locations. Long before these Ku-band DTH-I solutions became a reality, the satellite broadband campaigns had begun. In fact they started way back in the early 90s when Internet was not even a familiar word to consumers. The first system announce with considerable enthusiasm was the Teledesic system with its hundreds of LEO satellites holding the potential of broadband integrated services to rich and poor alike around the world. Highly publicized deliberations on 30/20 GHz band allocations raised equally high expectations of ubiquitous broadband around the corner and around the world. The bold Teledesic system concept stimulated a literal gold rush for both GEO and LEO systems at Ka, Ku for all kinds of applications. Unfortunately, as a recent review (3) for the US filings indicates, not even 5% of the global filings are likely to lead to real systems. In particular, this survey shows that during 2002, out of nearly 15 prominent players from the US, at the most one or two systems are likely to be completed. The majority of the rest stand to lose their licenses. Why this slow progress despite the phenomenal potential for DTH-I worldwide? It would be easy to blame it all on the general dotcom/telecommunication meltdown. But that would be too simplistic, if not avoiding our responsibility. Lets us if our general principles help us evaluate the apparent stagnation in the growth of DTH-I. Being a consumer service, did the systems diligently start with the customer in terms of his or her needs, price sensitivity etc.? Yes and no. The interim Ku-band solutions use the already deployed DTH-TV systems, thus there is limited scope for overall system optimization. The consumers pay much higher equipment costs than that for DSL and cable modems, despite subsidies from the operators. The service

charges are not competitive either. It is not surprising therefore that leading operators in the US are having second thoughts about continuing this phase at least in the US. In principle, Ka-band equipment costs should be lower, but it is still too early to predict what the final DTH-I customers will be asked to pay. While some of the new systems have gone for reasonable modest capacities in the space segment, others have placed great emphasis on maximizing the space segment throughput, even at the cost of making it quite non-fungible. Such large capacity systems can become serious financial risks if adequate market size either does not materialize or cannot be captured with the customer pricing offerings based on genuine cost recoveries. In other words, the “build-it-and-they-will-come” approach may be once again fraught with danger.. DTH-I is too important a segment to be dropped from the future of satellite systems. However, can we expect DTH-I to become another growth engine? At this point, the answer can be a qualified yes, provided a strong business-oriented rather than technology-cum-spectrum-grab approach is adopted. The reason for this cautious optimism is that the industry leaders indeed are very cognizant of the challenges. Some of the points emerging out of a recent panel discussion (4) are relevant and are utilized in the bullet points that follow:

• Satellite Internet business, DTH-I, is often considered a natural extension of DTH-TV. However, the system risk factors are quite different. While the DTH-TV satellite cost is independent of audience size, the total user-count controls the whole satellite size and system complexity for Internet applications.

• Full-mesh connectivity on-board processing satellites appear necessary only for large multi-site enterprises. Hybrid Ku/Ka and Ka/Ka band bent pipe architectures can provide the needed capacity and flexibility at acceptable risk for both smaller enterprises and consumers.

• Two-way services economics improves as system capacity increases. However, there should be matching credible market size to justify the large investments. The North American high speed Internet market is expected to rise to 23 million households in 2007. Satellite-based two-way systems have the potential to capture about 6 million..

• Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) cost is today a major factor in market penetration for two-way Internet services via satellites. CPE cost is very sensitive to volume and adoption of uniform standards can bring down the costs to levels comparable to that for competitive media.

• Return Channel spectral efficiency is key to

the overall economics of such services. Newer techniques are providing greater efficiencies, that will offset initial CPE expense by reducing recurring space segment costs.

• Above all, DTH-I is another crucial test for the satellite industry’s ability to make a business success in consumer sector. Will it build the systems from customer’s needs upwards, or from a technology satellite downwards? Will it match the system capabilities to individual markets in a timely manner? The answers to these questions and judicious adoption of direct consumer service principles could determine the ability of the industry to effectively compete with alternative media.

CONCLUSIONS

The first serious “news” of the imminent demise of the satellite industry was in late 1980s,when the first broadband cable TAT-8 was commissioned across the Atlantic. Not only did the industry weather that storm very well, it has grown handsomely since then. The inherent flexibility of this ubiquitous medium riding on advancing technology has allowed satellite systems to constantly adapt to the market conditions. Before older applications began to wither, new paradigms are developed and implemented, thus maintaining a healthy growth. As the industry ventured out to stand-alone enterprises to directly serve the consumers it made a few missteps that have been quite costly if not traumatic for those directly affected. Nevertheless, direct access to millions to users is what the future is all about and this paper has highlighted a few general principles to follow. Steady growth needs a steadier focus and in this respect the three areas, DTH-TV, digital radio and DTH-I have been highlighted. Given sound business principles, all the three could be growth engines for considerable periods into the future.

REFERENCES

1. D.K. Sachdev, “Planning for Financial Success”, Panel on Funding Satellite Internet Projects, Satellite Internet Applications & Services Conference, June 11-13, 2001, Arlington, VA.

2. D.K.Sachdev, Satellite News, 16 July, 2001

3. Tim Logue, Panel on Two-way Services, Satellite Internet Applications & Services Conference, December 5-7, 2001, San Diego, CA.

4. D.K.Sachdev, ibid