Satellite communications: Passage to middle age?

The commercial satellite communications industry is barely more than two decades old and is already experiencing symptoms of passage to middle age: The regulated environment of its early youth protected its market share and promoted investment in space and earth facilities designed to maximize transmission capacity for international point to point telephone traffic among a relatively few expensive earth antennas. The rapid growth and vigor of its young adult phase was encouraged by domestic deregulation and adoption of regional satellite systems by many countries. Because of the bandwidth limitations of terrestrial media, satellites proved cost-effective for high capacity requirements, especially TV distribution. The middle age symptoms of slowing down of growth and awareness of mortality are precipitated by the advent of fiber optics networks and the implications of further deregulation. Now there is much introspection about the competitive position of satellite communications with some arguing that this medium will hardly be used at all for voice traffic and will even suffer in respect to video and data applications unless end to end costs can be reduced. Are satellites then relegated to niche markets such as land mobile, thin route, and point to multipoint? Is this such a bad thing? This talk will describe these "passages" and the role of advanced network architectures and antenna developments in improving this medium\´s competitive position to secure its graceful transition to old age.