Latin America: A Growing Market for Satellite Connectivity Services

In 2024, broadband connectivity is nothing short of survival.

That’s why Argentine satellite internet provider Orbith is on a mission to ensure that every individual and business in Latin America has access to affordable, high-speed internet. The company recently announced its partnership with Astranis for a MicroGEO satellite to launch in 2025, and hopes to bring the cost of internet down to the price of a fast food meal for its customer base in Argentina, Chile, and soon, Paraguay.

Orbith co-founder and CEO Pablo Mosiul tells Via Satellite that fixed broadband penetration in Latin America is around 50 to 60 percent, and in more economically developed countries, this number increases to approximately 80 to 90 percent.

“However, there are always households without fixed broadband access, sometimes because they cannot afford it or because there is no available service,” Mosiul says. “In these cases, people may access the internet using mobile networks, at their jobs, or at school. Unfortunately, the lack of connectivity can seriously impact their development opportunities.”

With its own dedicated MicroGEO satellite, the company says it can tailor the technology to meet the specific needs of its customers, offering greater capacity and more efficient coverage.

“Unlike renting capacity on other satellites, having our own satellites ensures that we can offer high-quality connectivity at a fraction of the cost,” says Mosiul. “This approach is critical for reaching more users and making internet access increasingly affordable. Additionally, it allows us to implement cutting-edge technology and maintain stringent cost controls, which are essential for our growth and sustainability.”

The challenges Orbith hopes to address resonate throughout Latin America. While space and satellite activities are not unlike those in other parts of the world, the region’s priorities are influenced by unique challenges, including a vast digital divide. As economies drive towards a more data-driven approach, outside of video, a variety of incumbent communications providers and newcomers are doing their part to utilize the best available technology and make a difference — even with increasing competition from SpaceX’s Starlink and others.

While figures vary, it’s estimated that more than 200 million individuals across Latin America and the Caribbean are without a consistent internet connection. In rural areas that fiber and fixed broadband cannot always reach, only one in every three people in Latin America have internet access.

Latin America is seeing significant growth in consumer broadband with Wi-Fi hotspots and backhaul. At the same time, government social inclusion programs are working to bridge the digital divide and boosting overall capacity demand, says Vivek Prasad, senior analyst with Analysys Mason.

“Telcos are increasingly looking to integrate satcom capacity to their core network,” he says. “For network upgrades from 2G to 3G to 4G to 5G, it directly translates in step change in terms of satcom bandwidth demand. In addition to that, telcos are expanding their networks and value propositions, utilizing satellites, wherever it makes economic sense."

Also, competition from Starlink, which is available in most of Latin America, is driving prices even lower, he adds.

“As more bandwidth from upcoming constellations are infused in the market, we expect rapid and further erosion of the satcom wholesale and retail pricings,” says Prasad.

Amazon’s Project Kuiper is another Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation targeting Latin America as a key market. In mid-June, Amazon announced a deal with Vrio Corporation, the parent company of DirecTV Latin America and Sky Brasil to provide connectivity services when the constellation is operational to residential customers in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia.

Matías Campos Abad, CEO of Astralintu Space Technologies, a ground segment and space operations company founded in 2020 in Ecuador, said the emergence of new space, coupled with the privatization and democratization of the industry, is fueling growth in the region.

“The biggest opportunities in Latin America lie in the fact that it’s an emerging market,” says Campos, who also serves as the chair of the Latin-America and Caribbean Subcommittee for International Astronautical Federation (IAF LAC-SC). “There’s very little competition currently, so we have the chance to go big and not only benefit from creating space companies but actually be the ones who bring all the benefits of space back to our communities.”

Multi-Orbit Opportunities

The Latin American market makes up a growing portion of business for a handful of operators, and now accounts for about 70 percent of Spanish operator Hispasat’s business.

In 2022, the Madrid-headquartered organization acquired Axess Networks, one of the leading teleport operators and service providers with a big presence in Latin America and other regions, for $96 million. Just one year earlier, in 2021, Hispasat acquired the satellite video distribution business from Telefonica Group to take over the management and signal transport business of its subsidiary Media Networks Latin America.

“Latin America has been, is, and will be a key region for satellite communication services,” says Ignacio Sanchis, chief commercial officer at Hispasat, noting government support throughout Latin America has helped to buoy the region’s satellite investments. “In terms of geography and demography, there's a very dispersed population in rural areas.”

Sanchis also spoke at length about the importance of a multi-orbit strategy to its business goals of creating a unified, seamless, and homogenous experience for its customers.

“As a service provider, we use our own capacity on our Geostationary [GEO] satellite fleet, but we also use third party capacity,” says Sanchis. “We use whatever we need to provide the best solution to our customers, which are enterprise customers, telecom operator customers, and governments.”

While Hispasat uses Medium-Earth Orbit (MEO) for “very specific use cases,” the main growth is coming from LEO, he adds.

“Obviously Starlink has been a disruptor ... and they have very good service [but] there is still a lot of room for GEO-driven, centralized services,” says Sanchis. “LEO has the low latency benefit, which is very meaningful for some applications. But with GEO or a combined offering, we can provide the SLAs [service level agreements] and the quality of service that most of our professional customers are demanding from us.”

“By combining the benefits of LEO in our integrated offering with all these attributes, we feel that we can better satisfy the needs of our customers,” he adds.

Fully Managed Solutions

Intelsat is also pouring more resources into Latin America. In 2023, Intelsat invested upwards of $100 million to build additional capacity and launch new services in Brazil, which included the buildout of an existing teleport facility in Rio de Janeiro to deliver connectivity services to more users across the region.

Increasing access to connectivity is extremely important in countries like Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, and Chile, says Ricardo La Guardia, vice president of the commercial activities for Intelsat in the Americas region.

“It’s about an ecosystem — the entire solution. It’s more than just satellites,” La Guardia says. “The ground infrastructure is extremely important. That’s why we made a huge $100 million investment into Brazil, whose satellite footprint has coverage of the entire country, including the Amazon region. It’s extremely important how this grows. It’s not just the networks, it’s also the mobility business, the commercial aviation business, the government business, and mobile 5G use cases.”

Intelsat is also expanding its satellite coverage by offering multi-orbit coverage through Intelsat’s own GEO satellites, and partnerships with LEO satellite providers. This has enabled Intelsat to support a variety of use cases.

In April, Intelsat announced that it will provide CNH farm equipment — which includes the brands Case IH, Steyr, and New Holland — with ubiquitous internet access via satellite. Intelsat and CNH plan to roll out the solution in Brazil in the third quarter of the year.

“Our investments in Brazil enable us to go faster and support our customer needs to expand faster,” says La Guardia. “We can provide managed services, which is most important right now. Most of our customers are moving from managing everything to having a company such as Intelsat manage their operations.”

Regional Innovations

Embratel, a Brazilian telecommunications company headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, has also been busy since the launch of its Star One D2 satellite in 2022. Star One D2 was Embratel’s largest satellite to date, and it is equipped with four frequency bands, C-, Ku-, Ka-, and X-band. It covers the whole of Brazil, Latin American countries, and parts of the U.S. It is co-located with the Star One C4 satellite, which has South American and U.S. coverage.

“Since then, we have been studying the market and the demands of our clients to understand the best way to fulfill their needs,” says Gustavo Silbert, executive director at Embratel, noting that one of Embratel’s current projects includes a contract with the Brazilian Air Force Command (Aeronáutica) to provide satellite communication services. “Our customers want a reliable service with competitive pricing. They also need an operator that understands their business and speaks their language.”

Until recently, the price of satellite connectivity was the biggest barrier to adoption, he noted. With the introduction of high throughput satellites (HTS) and new technologies, this scenario started to change.

“Consumer broadband access and backhaul applications are driving the growth of space and satellites in Latin America,” he says. “More recently the new FTA [free-to-air] satellite TV has been generating new demands for Ku-band capacity. In our case, backhaul for mobile operators remains as the main driver of capacity usage.”

When asked about the impact of increasing competition on the region, Silbert acknowledged LEO’s role as a market disruptor.

“The market has a new player now, LEO solutions, that marks a significant disruption in the satellite business,” he says. “However, we believe that LEO will have more impact in some verticals that are not attended by Embratel, like the consumer market. We have been experiencing some competition in the enterprise market also, but other markets like broadcast and backhaul applications are continuing to grow with the GEO solution.”

Astralintu’s CEO Campos, meanwhile, suggests that Latin America is on the precipice of a technological renaissance — and that the best is yet to come.

“Nowadays, some of the biggest developments are happening in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, which have significant academic and institutional projects,” says Campos. “Brazil, for example, launched its first private commercial satellite by Visiona Technologies last year. Argentina has several startups that have deployed several cubesats and microsatellites into orbit. As well as Mexico, with many universities working towards launching the country's first constellations. In the case of Colombia, we've seen two pioneering missions coming from the Colombian Aerospace Force.”

Additionally, the whole region is creating forward-thinking and impactful startups, especially in Brazil, Argentina, and Central America, he adds, highlighting Astralintu’s partners at Orbital Space Technologies, which conducted Costa Rica’s second space mission at the end of 2022 to tackle a fungal infestation of banana plantations that posed an economic threat by analyzing the fungus in microgravity in search for potential cures.

Additionally, Campos points to emerging technologies in Guatemala, which leverage years of space microbiology research to bring commercial opportunities to the broader region with new companies like Verne Technologies and Jaguar Space, as exciting regional developments.

Astralintu Space Technologies is taking advantage of its equatorial location by developing an Equatorial Ground Station Network (EGSN). This would provide satellite operators worldwide with broader access to real-time information and satellite passes over the equator, minimizing data loss, he says. Currently, Astralintu’s first operational node in Ecuador is tracking an array of fleets of international constellations.

In late 2023, Astralintu announced a partnership with Ideia Space to bridge the gap between the people of Latin America and space by facilitating access through the launch of PocketQube missions, which are very small, 5 square centimeter satellites, one-eighth the size of cubesats.

“This partnership is very significant because it marks one of the first occasions where Latin Americans reached space without the need for external established actors,” Campos says. “This means that Latin American suppliers are providing Latin American actors with solutions for the benefit of Latin American people.” VS