Satellite navigation and communication

The European Commission supports through R&D programmes, the development of applications and services based on GNSS, the global navigation satellite system, a system that will be completed with Galileo in some years time (2013).

Potential applications and services exist in many areas ranging from road traffic to air traffic and from people finding to commercial location based publicity. An example is the Liveline project. A problem that is often neglected is the fact that these applications often require, next to a good position determination, a wireless communication path that connects a mobile unit to an application server. This wireless communication path is supposed to exist. For short range data communication, one can use a WLAN communication system. For long range data communication, the mobile telecommunication operators are supposed to deliver the solution.

But is this really true? There are still many issues. First, in the countryside, you still have ordinary 2nd generation GPRS communication. Basically, the best communication speed you can achieve is 56 kbit/s, the speed of a classical telephone line. The new generation data communication systems take much more time than anticipated 10 years ago. Secondly, data communication abroad still costs a fortune. The roaming charges for data communication are still too high for many applications to be economically viable. I also refer to a previous blog about internet access.

To summarise, the GNSS applications and services require a more holistic approach. Moreover, the mobile telecommunication operators need to become more involved with the Space - GNSS community of service providers. Today, they are either not interested in this emerging market, or they go their own way. S-band hybrid terrestrial - satellite communication could offer an alternative solution in some years time, but not tomorrow.

Sclerosis in the space sector?

I'm now 45 years old. Considering that my career started around 25 years and expecting that it could end at 65 years, if life permits, I should be half-way. Remarkable is that when it comes to project work, I'm often the oldest one in the team. On the other hand, in high-level conferences and networking events, I'm often among the youngest.

There is a specific problem with the space sector. The space sector lived its 'boom' in the later eighties, early nineties, before I started. In the bigger space companies, a hierarchical pyramid was built up, a large base of design and development people, a number of project managers and middle managers and a narrow top of company managers. Roughly 20 years later, this entire pyramid has grown older. At the base, new designers and developers have been recruited, but not proportional to the pyramid that was already there, the base is relatively too weak to support the heavy top. The top of the pyramid counts too much people and costs too much money. Many have to leave the larger companies and do something else, perhaps start their own company.

This is not so bad in itself. Experienced people from the space sector should be able to start space downstream service companies or they could cross-fertilise other sectors of economy. Their knowledge and skills should be fruitful in many sectors of economic life. In the current state of the economy however, many of these people are forced to stay in space business. The public hand somehow protects them, as it still spends a lot of money on space, but only few companies can really make a sound living from it. In space companies, revenues stagnate and salary costs increase continuously. As a result, the space sector suffers from decreasing profit margins. I am generalising a little bit, and I admit that the findings above are applicable to other sectors of economy as well, but a certain sclerosis of the space sector can't be denied.