Insight | Forging a government partnership through vision investment

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Forging a government partnership through vision investment

Government

Peter Hadinger, President Inmarsat U.S. Government Business Unit, on the proactive investments that Inmarsat makes to ensure its satellite technologies are available for customers when they need them.

We’re all amazed by the rapid changes in mobile communications technology, with cellphones and transmission technologies evolving constantly. Analog became digital, and in rapid succession we had 2G, 3G, 4G, LTE and devices that obsolete one another every six months.

As consumers, we’ve come to expect that these changes will happen and that we’ll simply be able to adopt them once they hit the market. But all of these progressions involve tremendous investment and thus risk for the carriers. What if cell phone companies required subscribers to commit to a new service concept before they invested to roll it out years later? Certainly it might reduce the risk on the company’s end, but customers may not be interested in such a deal. Generally only monopoly sports franchises can get season ticket holders to commit to new seats so far in advance.

Fortunately, cell phone carriers know their markets well and make enormous investments based on established trends, not pre-sold capacity. At Inmarsat, we don’t think the presale model is right for satellite communications either.

We run the world’s largest managed commercial satellite service network, and our model is unique in that we’re similarly driven to constantly invest in new service augmentations for our government customers in advance of need. Instead of asking for upfront commitments, we spend over $400 million a year on developing new infrastructure, equipment and capabilities without any guarantee that military, other government and many other customers will buy them.

We’re financially strong and willing and able to take on such risks, but most of all we know our diverse markets well, and we invest with business confidence. Being able to drive the speed of investment ourselves means that we’re able to stay ahead of technology trends and roll out services at the time of need, not years later. Government customers, who cannot predict specific demands in advance, hugely benefit from this model. Therefore, leveraging the diverse risk profile of commercial managed services pays off for both parties.

Experience makes for customer-benefiting decisions

As a result of this forethought and innovation, our customers get expanded coverage and features when they need it. We have unique insight to traffic models that leased transponder operators simply don’t have. This lets us model and anticipate trends across maritime, aviation and land users and synthesize new offerings in time for demanding market opportunities when they roll out. Our government customers need products and solutions in all of these domains and even their custom applications benefit greatly from the broad commercial investments we make.

Our development teams are made up of professionals who have extensive government experience, so they know first-hand both the mission drivers as well as the budget and acquisition realities. We take all of these into account, as well as insights gleaned from our long-time ongoing, close working relationship with federal decision makers and government users. As an example of this partnership, military customers were able to dovetail their equipment and mission plans with ours and were the first to be online with Ka-band as soon as we launched our first Global Xpress satellite. We knew that customers would want new Ka-band worldwide capacity in military bands to complement their own investments, and we made it happen.

We did the same in establishing “government sandboxes” – secure enclaves in each of our ground stations, where government customers could bring their own equipment to securely add unique services within our global network. In both cases, we saw the trends and knew that government customers would need these capabilities soon — and this foresight and investment have paid off.

“SATCOM as a Service” capabilities offer instant upgrades

That’s all part of our “SATCOM as a Service” capability – SATCOM delivered as a managed service, seemingly everywhere. Whether looking for the latest satellite transponder, equipment terminals, backhaul, capacity, features etc, government customers can acquire them as a service without any infrastructure costs. Government users subscribe to our end-to-end network and we continuously add offerings which are constantly available to them – all they need is an IP address. There is no R&D investment on the government’s part because this is what we do. If there are any existing gaps with respect to government capabilities/coverages, we can fill them.

As for other satellite providers? Most essentially deliver a “pipe” which gives satellite access, but requires government to build the additional features/functions on their own and pay to maintain and upgrade them. It also means that the government generally has to manage security and create resilience across leases.

That’s not the way we do business. We prefer to work the same way as our government customers, who also must anticipate the scope of demand years before it emerges but who must remain flexible in how and where it is used down the road. When the need for satellite capacity suddenly shifts from one part of the globe to another, for instance, we already have the coverage in place to make an immediate, seamless transition.

We pursue excellence well in advance, just as our government customers do. Because they see we share their core values of security and resilience, we’re better positioned to identify and understand their future requirements and invest accordingly. And that’s what being a trusted partner is all about.

If this sounds like something you would like to discuss, then please do contact us.

About the author


Peter Hadinger leads Inmarsat’s business unit responsible for all U.S. Government sales and programs. He has recently been responsible for developing the government-focused capabilities and services of Inmarsat’s new Global Xpress program. Previously he spent 30 years as a leader in technology development, engineering and government spacecraft programs at Northrop Grumman. He holds multiple patents in advanced communications.

Peter’s diverse regulatory and policy background includes leadership roles in the WTO Telecom Services Agreement, the FCC World Radio Conference Advisory Committee, the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee and a fellowship in the U.S. Senate.

Peter received his BSEEE from California State Polytechnic University, an MBA with emphasis in finance and strategic planning from George Mason University, and serves on engineering advisory boards at Virginia Tech.