Neil Fraser on a satellite industry in transition

Neil Fraser joined the British Army at 18 and served for 26 years, in the UK and Germany and on operations in the Balkans, Northern Ireland as well as on three tours of Afghanistan including at both Squadron/Company and Regimental Command. Those experiences shaped how he thinks and leads today.
 

During his years in uniform, satellite bandwidth was relatively scarce and a “specialist sport”. Today, that expectation is very different.
 

"People expect to pick up a small terminal and get 100 megabits per second with ease."
 

Neil joined NSSLGlobal six years ago.  Part of his role is to understand what customers need now, and in the future, and help NSSLGlobal position itself to meet those needs.

A long history and a broad customer base

NSSLGlobal has nearly six decades of experience in satellite communications across commercial maritime and defence and government sectors. "We first supported the Royal Navy in 1982, with the task group liberating the Falkland Islands, bringing Inmarsat services to some of the vessels without satcom" Neil says. 
 

The company continues to grow and continues to recruit, largely for engineers and sales positions, and with a key acquisition in September of an additional 25 staff, now has around 275 people. Roughly half of those are in various offices across the UK and half across mainland Europe, including about 25 in Norway, with a few in Singapore and the USA. 
 

The company serves two main customer groups: commercial maritime, mainly oil tankers and cargo vessels, and defence and government, where the UK MOD is the largest single customer.

Three developments shaping 2027

Right now, the satellite communications industry and their main customers are talking about three main developments:
 

• Sovereign and resilient networks, as countries seek greater control over their communications and data and greater resilience against jamming, cyber or physical attacks.  This impacts for example defence, government, first responders and Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) such as utilities.
   
• Dual-use systems, as the line between civilian and military applications continues to blur, and governments seek to deliver better value and more widely applicable services both at home and abroad.
   
• Direct-to-device (D2D) and wider Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity, which lets ordinary smartphones or small devices, such as monitoring systems, connect directly to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. This is a key growth area with many companies launching specific constellations and capabilities
   

All three affect demand for what NSSLGlobal delivers.  Understanding these from both a customer and industry perspective is essential for the company, and for Arendals Fossekompani as an owner, if its solutions and service are to remain relevant and competitive.

 

Demand at every headquarters

"Satcom is absolutely vital in providing independent and assured communications from the moment of landing in a deployed environment, and then in enabling any force to build up and operate," says Neil.
 

The biggest change he has seen is in throughput. "There was roughly a 15-fold increase in connectivity in just seven years between 2000 and 2007 in Afghanistan for example, going from basic email and voice to imagery and full motion video. Demand was suppressed back then by the capacity in orbit, and that's simply not the case now. The technology is unrecognisable, and demand has grown exponentially."
 

And it keeps climbing. "What was once a full brigade's information demand is now needed at every deployed HQ and even at a small patrol, with reachback to the cloud and a host of increasing user and commander needs."
 

The war in Ukraine has added another challenge. "Headquarters find it harder to hide. They need to move, regroup, plan and move again, perhaps dispersing staff functions but still operating together seamlessly. That pushes demand up again, along with the need for smaller, easier-to-use terminals and also local terrestrial connectivity using satellite to bridge to other teams"

A new generation of satellites

Geostationary (GEO) satellites have been around for decades, along with low throughput Iridium in LEO. For Neil, the game-changer has been the LEO broadband constellations, such as SpaceX (Starlink and Starshield services) and Eutelsat-OneWeb, both of which NSSLGlobal provides to customers. 
 

"Not a month goes by without more providers entering the market or at least talking about it.  Why? Because reliable, small terminals reaching places where you previously couldn't get connectivity makes the scale and opportunity significant, especially in areas lacking decent 5G terrestrial connectivity – which is a lot of the planet and a lot of people."
 

Demand is growing in every domain. At sea, it is driven by operational tempo, a more hybrid navy (crewed and uncrewed platforms) and for crew welfare.  

On land, it is about deploying over greater distances with more dispersed forces and transmitting video and intelligence. In the air, aircraft deployments beyond existing air bases towards more expeditionary agile bases are driving demand, as are surveillance platforms. 
 

Across all three domains, it is the need to connect sensors to shooters via decision makers, with initiatives around Digital Targeting Webs and other similar sounding programmes working across allied nations. 

Increased complexity with no single solution 
Neil points to five challenges for the industry: network security, consolidation, regulation and spectrum, trade barriers and supply chain (notably more of a challenge of late) and orbital congestion. Spectrum is a particular concern. "The bodies responsible for allocating orbital slots and frequency bands are having to develop entirely new regulations, and the competition for spectrum is intensifying both between satellite operators and between them and terrestrial providers."
 

For Neil, a key takeaway is clear. "High-throughput services are very reliable, but you can't rely on a single solution in case it gets jammed or denied in other ways. No one system balances coverage, capacity, confidence in the supply chain, use for national missions and so on and so having choice is vital."
 

That is where NSSLGlobal's experience and supply chain counts. "We have long delivered hybrid networks: VSAT broadband and narrowband over GEO or LEO, seamless LTE connectivity when near port, then multiple broadband links across GEO and high-throughput LEO, and LEO with LEO. They're adaptive, end-to-end controlled solutions, with bundled plans, a single point of contact and coherent service management."
 

He also has a warning. "People have forgotten how to operate without these capabilities, and that's a real danger. Many in defence have become too reliant on satellite connectivity, which ultimately can be denied by an enemy, or simply by lack of power, equipment failure or fuel resupply.  Users in the field should always have a reserve and never run out of options – and be able to operate on legacy voice when high throughput is denied, or even completely offline"

For Neil, the next chapter is about more than bandwidth. It's about giving customers the confidence that their communications will hold when they're needed most.

For Arendals Fossekompani, NSSLGlobal's expertise in this area is a clear example of how our portfolio is positioned to meet the growing demand for secure and resilient infrastructure.
 

About NSSLGlobal
NSSLGlobal is a leading provider of satellite communications, systems integration, surveillance and tracking solutions, engineering and IT solutions across the maritime, enterprise, defence and government sectors. By combining technology with excellence, the company integrates IT, cybersecurity, IP network design, project management and a range of managed services, setting the gold standard in project engineering at sea, on land and in the air.