A satellite-cellular merger could be the next revolutionary tech innovation

From time-to-time, important technologies merge and change the world forever. This is what happened when cellphone, internet, digital camera and GPS technologies merged into today’s smartphones. 

Smartphones were less the invention of a new technology than an economic and engineering innovation that integrated technologies previously considered quite separate. We may be on the verge of the next major technology integration with the merger of satellite communications (satcom) with cellular communications (cellcom).

Earlier this year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opened a complex, far-reaching proceeding in which it proposes to integrate satellite and cellular communications in a way that would allow smartphones to communicate through either a cell tower or a satellite. The proceeding is revolutionary because it proposes to integrate what has until now been considered two utterly different technologies and completely separate regulatory environments. 

As recently as the 1990s, it could have been compared to combining a freezer with an oven or a hunting license with a driver’s license. This initiative would classify satcom using one’s smartphone as a “supplement” to one’s cellular service when no cell service is available. I believe, however, that it represents only the first step in the merger of these two important technologies. 

This results from dramatic changes in the technologies, economics and applications of both satellite and cellular communications. Over time, it opens the possibility of redefining how we think about engaging in every online activity, from social media to telephone, video, browsing, email and online shopping, banking, voting, gaming and more. To understand why this is difficult and important, we need to understand why cellular and satellite communications have been considered so different. 

Communications satellite and cellular communications technologies have both been around for decades but viewed as entirely separate from each other. (Full disclosure: I am author of a textbook on the history of mobile satellite communications.) Due largely to America’s space race with the Soviets and the role of satellite-based communications in America’s global military footprint, satcom entered military and commercial services in the 1960s mainly to link fixed satellite dishes located thousands of miles apart. 

The technology consists of terminals on the ground sending and receiving voice, data and video to and from a satellite in orbit overhead. One type of satellite technology consists of large satellites in a very high (22,000-mile-high) orbit where the satellites appear to be fixed stationary in the sky; while another technology uses smaller satellites in low (200-500 mile-high) orbits, where the satellites appear to be moving across the sky. 

Satcom historically required very expensive rockets to place each satellite in orbit, enormous and expensive satellites and powerful two-way radios both on the ground and in orbit. Because satellites simultaneously transmit to and from many nations, from the outset, their radio frequencies and orbital slots have been coordinated and licensed by the United Nation’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU.)

For all these reasons, satcom has a 70-year history of being internationally coordinated, very expensive to use, integrated in their voice, data and video capabilities, closely related to the military and normally requiring large terminals and antennas on the ground. 

In contrast, cellcom (the idea of having a mobile two-way radio communicate anyplace within a “cell” that surrounds a tower and then be able to move from one radio cell to another) was introduced in the 1980s as a successor to dispatch voice radio and local MTS (mobile telephone). Both were local, radio-tower-based voice services of interest to fleet operators and important and wealthy people in their cars.  

McKinsey estimated the total cellcom market in the U.S. at around 900,000 (compared with around 330 million users today). The main early difference between MTS/dispatch radio and 1980’s cellcom was the ability of the mobile unit to seamlessly roam between cell sites without dropping their telephone call. 

Importantly, cellcom was voice-only, orders of magnitude less costly than satcom, unrelated to the military, inherently within and licensed by each country and required mobile equipment that was miniature compared with satcom equipment. During the late 1990s and 2000s, cellcom gradually expanded to include text, email and eventually everything available on the internet. 

So, the assigned-frequencies, footprints, cost-structures, engineering, regulation, staffing, national security implications, licensing and the industries supporting satcom and cellcom grew up separately for a half century.  The last 10-15 years have seen dramatic changes in the technology and economics of both cellcom and satcom, most dramatically in satcom: The same advances in miniaturization and microchip technologies that have enabled today’s smartphones also enabled satellite miniaturization and redesign, and a vast reduction in the size and cost of satcom ground equipment. 

Equally important, innovations in rocketry, such as reusable rockets, have reduced the cost of launching anything into orbit. If both the size of a satellite and the per-pound cost of launching any satellite enormously shrink, then operating a satellite in the 2020s will cost a tiny fraction of what it did a few decades ago. This has led to an entrepreneurial explosion of thousands of tiny communications satellites, primarily low-Earth, orbit.

All of which set the economic and technological stage for a first-ever merger of satellite and cell communications.

Over the past year, as noted by the FCC in its introduction to its proposal, there have been a series of announcements by satellite operators, smartphone manufacturers, cellcom carriers and entrepreneurs of new partnerships that will allow smartphones to communicate through a satellite. 

Many of these are described as enabling a smartphone user to access emergency services.  Obviously, they raise a host of technical and regulatory issues for which the FCC has been flexible in order to encourage the development of this new merger of technologies. At this point, about a dozen companies have announced interest in getting involved in integrated satellite and cellular services using smartphones.

We are at the beginning of a new form of merged satellite and cellular communications. Over time, it holds the possibility of offering global, seamless communications of every sort for users who will never again receive a report that says, “Out of Range.”

Roger Cochetti provides advisory and counseling services in Washington, D.C. He has served as a senior official in the State Department and later as a senior executive with COMSAT, IBM, VeriSign and CompTIA.