In a recent IoT Insider webinar, Globalstar‘s Martin Jefferson and Global Telesat Communications‘ David Phipps explained why satellite is no longer a last resort for remote assets, and why it is becoming a core layer of a resilient, hybrid IoT strategy.
We’re often told we live in an increasingly connected world. For organisations managing assets beyond the reach of a cell tower, that claim doesn’t hold up. In IoT Insider‘s webinar, Connecting the Unreachable: Satellite Connectivity in Action, hosted by Editor Lucy Barnard, Martin Jefferson, Global Solutions Architect at Globalstar, and David Phipps, CEO of Global Telesat Communications (GTC), set out where satellite fits in today’s IoT landscape, and where it doesn’t.
The gap is bigger than you think
Jefferson pointed out that cellular networks are built where people live, which isn’t necessarily where assets are. “Most of the Earth’s surface is actually not covered by a terrestrial technology,” he said. “I see people that get shocked when I say that out loud.”
The reason, he explained, is economic: “There has to be a certain number of subscribers to justify the infrastructure you have to put in place for a terrestrial service.” Pipelines, substations, and farmland sit away from population centres by design.
Phipps, whose company has sold more than 60,000 Globalstar products to customers in 150 countries, sees the consequences every day. He highlighted rising demand for lone worker protection, and the scale of plant theft in UK construction, where sites often have no cellular coverage at all. “It doesn’t necessarily stop the theft, but it lets you know straight away that theft has occurred, and there’s a much greater chance of recovery.”
From schedules to conditions
Once remote assets are visible, operations change. “The biggest shift is you go from doing everything on a schedule to doing something that’s condition based,” said Jefferson. A maintenance cycle carried out four times a year might drop to three. “You’re really making informed decisions based on hard data rather than guesswork.”
Phipps added that customers learn about a leaking pipe or a problem on site straight away, rather than on the next scheduled visit days later. “We’ve got customers using devices they paid not much for seven, eight years ago, and they’re still working.”
Complementary, not competing
While fully remote operations are a natural fit, Jefferson said the biggest growth is in hybrid deployments. “Satellite is a complementary technology that sort of completes the puzzle,” he said. “There is no one single wireless technology out there that will satisfy all of your needs today and tomorrow.”
Satellite also suits IoT well because IoT runs on small data. “There’s real value in a location fix, and there’s value in a sensor reading, and those things just take a couple of bytes worth of data to go over the air.”
The hardware has caught up too. Multi-mode devices once meant two radios and two subscriptions; software-defined radios now put both on one chipset. Jefferson pointed to Globalstar’s RM200 module, which supports Cat M1 and Globalstar on one chip and can choose the cheapest available network for each transmission. Further out, the convergence of satellite and cellular through non-terrestrial networks (NTN) points to “a single chip that just roams on whatever is available”, although Jefferson cautioned that is still years away “because the standards need to stop moving before everybody starts adopting.”
Smarter trackers, less noise
Asset tracking, satellite IoT‘s most established use case, is evolving quickly. “Now it’s not ‘where is my asset?’,” said Jefferson. “It’s ‘what’s my asset doing?'” Customers want sensor data such as temperature, door status, and hard braking events, battery life that matches the lifetime of the asset (increasingly helped by built-in solar), and reporting by exception.
“I want to monitor all of these things, but I only want you to tell me when something is wrong, and that’s really being done at the device level,” he said. “That’s where the fundamental change is happening in this industry.”
Beyond visual line of sight
The same logic applies to drones inspecting pipelines, power lines, and offshore wind farms. Operators need proof of custody and the ability to send short commands such as “return to base” or new target coordinates, not a live video feed. “It’s no longer appropriate to say, ‘I lost sight of it, so I didn’t know what happened to it,'” Jefferson said.
Bandwidth also has a physical cost. A broadband terminal on a small drone, he noted, “will keep it from getting off the ground in the first place.”
Resilience you plan for in advance
Both speakers stressed satellite’s role as a backup layer, even where cellular coverage exists. Power is the first thing lost in a natural disaster, networks become overloaded and cell sites go dark. Because the same piece of data on Globalstar’s network can be processed by up to three satellites and come down through four or five ground stations, there’s no single point of failure.
Phipps warned that too many organisations leave it too late. “Get something in place so you don’t have to worry about it, not have something in place so you do need to worry about it when the time comes.” In regulated sectors such as oil and gas, Jefferson added, “it’s not acceptable to say, ‘I can’t fill out my regulatory report because my comms is down.'”
Jefferson’s closing advice was to choose a provider with a long-term roadmap, since constellations need replacing roughly every 15 years, and to right-size the price plan. “In the past that was always a problem in satellite. We were very rigid, but that’s changed significantly. It’s a different world now.”
The full webinar is available to watch on demand below:
