Maritime SATCOM Embraces Transition Towards HTS

The migration towards HTS-based services in the maritime SATCOM market is continuing to accelerate in the face of on-going challenges in some segments of the sector through 2022. Those are the findings from the Northern Sky Research 9th edition of the Maritime SATCOM Markets report.

“This acceleration towards HTS-based connectivity architectures mirrors trends found in other mobility verticals. The passenger market continues to show signs of ‘recovery mode’ through 2023, but merchant maritime is building on the accelerated digitization efforts over the past 18 months."

NSR Principal Analyst and Report Author, Brad Grady.

While 2020 and 2021 continue to feel the impacts of COVID-19 in segments such as the cruise ship industry, NSR found that a clear shift from FSS (Fixed Satellite Service) to GEO-HTS (Hight Throughput Satellites) is underway.

At $2.2 billion in retail revenues in 2020 and nearly 70,000 Broadband Enabled SATCOM vessels, market fundamentals remain strong. The market is poised to grow to more than 142,000 Broadband Vessels by 2030 and yield $34.4 billion in cumulative retail revenues.

“This acceleration towards HTS-based connectivity architectures mirrors trends found in other mobility verticals,” said NSR Principal Analyst and Report Author, Brad Grady. “The passenger market continues to show signs of ‘recovery mode’ through 2023, but merchant maritime is building on the accelerated digitization efforts over the past 18 months. Offshore customers are adjusting to a continuously changing commodity price, and the fishing/leisure markets look to take advantage of new lower cost connectivity options. Bandwidth demand continues to rise in the face of new capacity being launched by satellite operators – with more than 950 Gbps of FSS and HTS capacity forecasted by 2030.”

Total spending by end-users for broadband connectivity on an average basis is expected to grow across all core segments, as VSAT vessel adoption increases. While sectors such as the merchant market will only see single-digit increases in average monthly per-vessel revenues, a recovery in the passenger market, and greater capacity consumption of Non-GEO HTS services in the offshore segment will drive growth into 2030. Fishing and Leisure ride the wave of technology transformations as smaller dish sizes combine with on-going end-user connectivity demand, driving broadband service penetration.

Overall, the near-term restraints from COVID-19 appear to be diminishing in the maritime SATCOM market, but a clear focus on digitization is here to stay. At a broadband penetration rate exceeding 26% by 2030, retail revenues are forecast to reach $34.4 billion cumulatively from 2020 to 2030, and over 950 Gbps of throughput demand by 2030. NSR sees the key metrics of the market staying positive, even if 2020 remained a challenging year for some segments.

(Source Northern Sky Research news release)