David Gelerman, président et PDG de SpaceBridge, parle à Teletimes International

Khalid Athar : How did the year 2020 play out for the satellite industry? Especially in context of the global pandemic that hit the world?

David Gelerman: 2020 was a challenging year that presented unique challenges for the Satellite industry. In fact, short term delays observed, as COVID affects work environments and possibly slows manufacturing, logistics, etc. But the longer-term planning remains unchanged. New services, such as new Very High Throughput Satellites (VHTS GEOs and new constellations, like MPower and alternate MEO constellations, and many LEO constellations), will continue to move forward through 2021 and beyond. SpaceBridge has remained vigilant on fulfilling the needs of our customers.

Our amazing team continues to innovate and work just as hard as they had, prior to the COVID pandemic. In fact, I would actually say even harder. I am very proud of our team for our persistent pursuit. Specially on their pursuit in innovation, quality, reliability and regulatory compliance for all our products and solutions; that are not only relevant to our customers. As well as also provide them with the capabilities to make their operations more agile and versatile.

SpaceBridge’s Milestones

KA: Quels ont été les principaux projets et étapes réalisés par SpaceBridge au cours de l'année dernière ?

David Gelerman: Though 2020 was uniquely challenging, it has now led us onto a strong growth trajectory. We are hiring additional team members for key positions and seeking top talent, to continue to shape our future growth and innovations. In terms of technology and products, we took the opportunity to review our portfolio. Therefore, we revamped our plans for new terminals and service offerings, and realign our strategy for new markets in-line with our core competencies. In fact, we are thinking more in the direction of simplifying our customers life from a financial investment perspective, bandwidth efficiency, and also technical; assisting them on overall total cost of ownership of new ground segment platforms and technologies throughout innovative implementation of creative business structures. We have remained focused on the evolution of our WaveSwitch™ solution.

SpaceBridge ASAT™ WaveSwitch™, is a first in-class innovative, award-winning technology that enables dynamic return link selection and switching to the most appropriate waveform. It enables our customers to define custom tailored triggers that are programmed and then implemented by Artificial Intelligence (AI) to provide the appropriate MF-TDMA, A-SCPC, and SCPC waveform traffic selection and delivery in real-time.

Thereby optimizing satellite resource usage for satellite networks and operators. Real-time waveform switching provides ample savings for applications seeing drastic traffic density changes, such as cellular backhaul and trunking. We continued our efforts to provide improved end-to-end platform efficiencies in the Datalink layers by innovating new compression mechanisms, and in the physical layer we have improved dynamic high arrays of MODCODs, providing a very efficient total cost of ownership. Moreover, we have also added several new hardware platforms with advanced computing capabilities, enabling value added services to be provided in EDGE computing devices. We can confidently disclose that our HTS experience is profoundly enabling end-to-end Layer 2 connectivity. Additionally, it enables integrating with MPLS or SD-WAN network services.

Partenariats

KA: Quelle sera l'importance des partenariats, au cours de la nouvelle décennie, pour combler la fracture numérique et connecter les personnes non connectées ?

David Gelerman: SpaceBridge welcomes all kinds of partnerships that can secure and execute needed initiatives. Together, we effectively provide quality and more affordable solutions for our customers. It is true that competition makes for a stronger industry. However, when we join efforts in these joint missions, we make large strides forward in closing the digital divide. At the end of the day, a lot of it boils to time-to-market. We are more than capable to bring a complete platform solution of our own. In many cases, it makes more sense to leverage the experience, market reach, and manufacturing capabilities of our partners that specialize in certain areas. We would like to remind our customers and prospective customers. That as a SATCOM powerhouse, we hold the unique end to end integration capabilities. They provide our customers with a holistic, flexible and comprehensive ground segment solution.

We are very happy with the various business ventures we are part of. Whether they made possible by revenue share or managed services. In fact, we notice that these offerings enable us to provide a good price point and excellent performance. End users choose our services for these reasons, and we are very pleased with this trend.

Benefits of Partnership with SpaceBridge

KA: Comment SpaceBridge aide-t-il ses clients à monétiser l'offre de leurs services à valeur ajoutée ?

David Gelerman: On the services front, we launched a new service that offers seamless connectivity on a pay-by-the-byte basis. In addition, it has no upfront CAPEX. We actively engaged with several partners for providing capacity over several regions. Moreover, to the savings that are made possible by WaveSwitch, where waveform switching provides substantial savings for applications with drastic traffic density changes, such as cellular backhaul and trunking. SpaceBridge also provides autonomous managed services