TAMPA, Fla. — Agility Beyond Space (ABS) is keen to embrace new business models and strategic partnerships as the rapidly evolving satellite market shifts beneath the Dubai-based geostationary operator’s feet.
“We live in interesting times,” quipped Mark Rigolle, a satellite industry veteran who took the helm of ABS last year in the latest shake-up for the company.
“While market prices have gone down [for satellite capacity] and continue to erode — although it seems to be bottoming out a little bit — the cost of buying a new satellite has barely changed,” Rigolle said in an interview with SpaceNews.
“For any operator, just replacing like-for-like satellites has become increasingly difficult.”
This reality has driven ABS to explore new approaches, such as a condosat model, where multiple customers share a single satellite to lower costs and investment risks.
“We’re working on developing a condosat approach in one or two cases,” Rigolle continued, “and we’re working on government programs where we will maybe also take part of the capacity.
Transitioning to Ka-band
Historically, ABS satellites in geostationary orbit (GEO) have relied on wide-beam C- and Ku-band frequencies, but the company is looking to pivot toward Ka-band spectrum to align with increasing demand for higher throughput services.
At the 75 degrees East orbital position over the Indian Ocean, where ABS currently has two geostationary satellites, the company plans to replace the ABS-2 spacecraft with one equipped with commercial and military Ka-band capabilities after it depletes fuel toward the end of this decade.
At 116.1 degrees East over the Philippines and South China Sea, ABS is looking for a partner to invest in a satellite to use the Ka-band reservation the operator has lodged with international spectrum regulators.
“Those are the projects that we’re trying to finalize now, and we’ll hopefully be able to talk about them in more detail within six months to a year,” Rigolle said.
“There’s light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s not an oncoming train.”
Adapting to Starlink’s growing presence
Smaller satellite operators like ABS are facing increasing competition from SpaceX’s Starlink and other low Earth orbit (LEO) constellations, which are starting to disrupt traditional GEO capacity contracts.
Starlink, which initially focused on consumer broadband, has been expanding aggressively into government and enterprise services.
While consumer broadband is not part of ABS’ portfolio, Rigolle said the company has still felt the effects of LEO competition.
However, he emphasized that ABS’ focus on customers with mission-critical needs has insulated it from the worst of this impact.
“Our enterprise network customers need to be able to rely on the connectivity that is provided to them,” he said. “The best effort service really doesn’t make any sense, and so yes, we’ve had some erosion of our revenue base, but it’s been a lot less than what I’ve seen at certain other operators.”
With a global team of fewer than 160 people, Rigolle highlighted how the company’s small size also provides an advantage by enabling it to respond quickly to customer needs.
“The reporting lines are short,” he added. “Decisions are made very quickly — same day usually for pricing, activation of service, and more. That’s what we bring to the market, and that’s what customers respond to quite favorably.”
Multi-orbit future
A former CEO for O3b, the medium Earth orbit network that was partly owned by SES during his tenure and is now fully owned by the operator, which also operates geostationary satellites, Rigolle is a strong proponent of multi-orbit strategies that offer greater redundancy and flexibility.
“If you as a satellite operator don’t offer [a multi-orbit solution], then the customer will cobble it together themselves,” he said.
Non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) systems such as Starlink need to illuminate the entire globe to provide service, he continued, and this global architecture reduces the return on investment as incremental satellites are added.
Rigolle argued that GEO and NGSO systems will eventually need to work together to address these economic challenges.
“Maybe with relative valuations being totally depressed for GEO operators at the moment, if I were managing a non-GEO network which had deep pockets, I would be thinking of buying some geostationary operators,” he said.
ABS currently provides connectivity to enterprises, service providers, broadcasters and government entities over Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific with five satellites: ABS-2, ABS-2A, ABS-3A, ABS-4/Mobisat-1 and ABS-6.