Does this seem like a sensible purchase?

Save yourself years of struggle and investment with an IoT Connectivity Lease.

Sure, launching your own satellite IoT constellation into orbit seems impressive. But whether you’re a connectivity provider or an investor, spectrum leasing from Inmarsat’s ELERA network for IoT is unquestionably the smarter choice.

 

To find out why, choose one of the options below.

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Why deploying your own IoT satellites is all risk and few rewards.

 

It may seem like a great idea on paper, but the reality of your portfolio companies building their own satellite IoT constellation represents a number of risks to your investment.

To begin with, building satellites is extremely costly – no matter how compact they are. And even though launch prices are slowly falling, it still takes around $500,000 to put a 3kg nano satellite into low-Earth-orbit (LEO). 

Perhaps that would be a manageable expense, if you only needed to fund one LEO satellite. But it takes dozens, perhaps hundreds, of LEO satellites to achieve effective regional coverage. And for global coverage, that number surges into the thousands.  

Again, perhaps that would be achievable – if LEO satellites lasted for decades. But the lifespan of successfully deployed SmallSats is just five years. Which means the satellite IoT constellation would require continual replacements and substantial maintenance.

Many LEO satellites never get that far, either. A significant proportion of the satellite IoT constellation you would fund, would probably fail upon launch – as the Starlink mission of February 2022 showed. In fact, NASA calculated that 42.6% of SmallSats were partial or total failures from 2009-2016.

Any failed LEO satellites would then become hazardous space debris. And that's a problem which policymakers are now studying. In fact, new regulations for LEO satellites are probably imminent and your IoT constellation would have no guarantee of compliance.

  • Spiralling costs
  • High risk of failure
  • Short lifespan
  • Continual maintenance
  • Compliance uncertainty
  • Contribution to space junk

Altogether, attempting to deploy your own satellite IoT constellation is loaded with risk. And it would tie up precious investment funding, which could be better spent across other areas of your business. Not to mention the opportunity cost of several years time and effort.

Fortunately, there is a safer, faster and more efficient route to reliable satellite IoT connectivity.

 

Choose flexible access to the world's foremost satellite IoT network instead.

 

With an IoT Connectivity Lease from Inmarsat, you can rapidly create your own virtual satellite network. You can easily integrate our ELERA network with your IoT technology and manage it how you wish. You can scale up the power, bandwidth and geography as you grow and benefit from all Inmarsat's commercial and regulatory support along the way.

 

To request a call from an Inmarsat satellite IoT specialist, click here.