Connected vehicles represent a major revenue generator for direct-to-device connectivity, executives agreed today during Connectivity Business News’ webinar “Decoding direct-to-device.”
Connected vehicles are “an excellent beachhead for getting into an area where you can gain mass adoption very quickly,” Chris Baird, chief executive at wireless connectivity provider Optconnect, said. “A lot of the connected devices we see today are vehicles, though many aren’t being fully utilized or optimized for predictive maintenance or fleet operations, but they will get there.”
Direct-to-device connectivity is in its own 1G phase, Baird said, and as autonomous driving continues to innovate, demand for machine networks will expand.
The mobility ecosystem
In its effort to quickly get ahead of the evolving direct-to-device sector, non-terrestrial network provider Skylo has announced partnerships with Legato, Inmarsat, Terrastar and Viasat, Tarun Gupta, chief product officer and co-founder of Skylo, said during the webinar. As the technologies mature, we’ll see smartphones with increasingly sophisticated direct-to-device capabilities, with the market expanding to wearables soon, he said.
“We worked closely with the Sonys the Qualcomms and Samsungs of the world to ensure this technology was embedded into the chipset,” said Gupta. “There was a bad cycle between the thoughts of devices not being unavailable until the networks, and the networks not being available before the devices. We broke that cycle by creating the networks first.”
The effort has paid off. “Because of our 90-plus patents, we’ve been able to connect devices the size of an Apple air tag direct to satellite,” Gupta said.
Meanwhile, mobile network operators have done a good job of covering as much geography as they can, said Mahmoud Khafagy, director of product management at direct-to-smartphone operator Lynk Global.
“But there’s always limits,” he said. “There are already cell towers that aren’t closing their business case, we won’t see more like that.”
With connectivity demand starting to form in places where new cell towers aren’t likely to be put up, Lynk foresees a mainstream service for connecting mobile devices by satellite in the long term.
AST SpaceMobile and Lynk experienced some funding issues, delaying them enough for Starlink to catch up with testing direct-to-device technologies on modified smartphones, Lluc Palerm, principal analyst at Northern Sky Research, said at the group’s own webinar today.
“Direct-to-device continues to advance very rapidly,” Palerm said. “New regulatory approval, satellites and funding offer encouraging signs. Actors looking to participate in this ecosystem need to move fast because this vertical is evolving quickly. This is gaining traction in the telco world now – they’re working out how to integrate satellite into their businesses.”
Future D2D technologies
Direct-to-device connectivity goes beyond texting to address voice calls and even data, webinar participant George Giagtzoglou, vice president of strategy at Omnispace, agreed, referencing the 1.9 billion devices predicted to be connected in non-terrestrial networks by 2035.
But, “if you’re looking to watch ‘Game of Thrones’ in the Sahara Desert, this isn’t for you,” he said. “For the vast majority of users, they simply want seamless connectivity experience when outside of cell coverage. This won’t be a seamless 5G experience, given the amount of capacity, but will connect simple applications on our phones from remote locations.”
Unlimited, global connectivity will result in new applications, Giagtzoglou suggested, spanning connected cars, oil and gas, and agriculture.
“The marketing for the first smartphone wasn’t positioned for the applications of today where we check our blood pressure and track the location of our kids. As we expand, we’ll see a similarly elaborate expansion of use cases,” he said.
