British satellite telecoms company Inmarsat has launched a new Internet of Things (IoT) spectrum leasing service for its ELERA IoT satellite network.
The target market is satellite IoT start-ups and other organisations that want to offer IoT solutions to their own customers via satellite links.
According to an announcement from the company today, the new leasing service offers client providers the ability to adapt virtual satellite networks flexibly, depending on business needs.
“Traditional spectrum leasing services offer satellite solution providers with static access to a particular beam or set of beams for a contracted timeframe, so they can deliver an end-to- end solution to their customers,” explained the company.
However, the new system allows customers to change the geographical focus of the beams they lease, together with the bandwidth and power they provide.
“Rather than paying for static access in every beam they operate in, and having to make hard business decisions as to which regions to expand to, IoT solution providers can now control how much coverage they need, depending on their business needs and customer demand,” said Inmarsat.
The theory is that leasing offers a more affordable and flexible alternative to creating a dedicated satellite constellation, which would be prohibitively expensive – in both dollars and time – to launch, run, and maintain.
Leasing switches the financial burden from capex to opex and speeds up the process, while offering a lot more on-demand flexibility – analogous to as-a-service cloud usage.
Mike Carter, President of Inmarsat Enterprise, said,
“Many IoT solution providers feel they must invest in their own satellites to deliver IoT everywhere, but this simply isn’t the case – and it can be too much, too soon.”
