Standards-Based NTN for IoT Seen Starting to Take Off

Skylo Technologies sees a substantial market for satellite-connected IoT devices, Tarun Gupta, Skylo co-founder and chief product officer, said Thursday. Adding satellite coverage to terrestrial service “will really remove the borders of connectivity” and mean no one should worry “do I have coverage here or not?” Gupta said during a Mobile World Live webinar on non-terrestrial networks (NTNs). Other speakers said use cases for NTN are already emerging.

Skylo has worked on satellite service to cellphones for six years, Gupta said. “We recognize the complementary nature of what we bring to the mobile operators,” which is allowing people “to have the same device with the same SIM" everywhere, he said. Skylo has its own certification program “to make sure that devices are good stewards of spectrum and good actors on the network.”

A growing number of modules, chipsets and devices incorporate the 3rd Generation Partnership Project NTN standards, Gupta said. The proprietary NTNs from companies including SpaceX and AST SpaceMobile require spectrum from the mobile operators and for new satellites to be launched and operational, he said. Proprietary solutions require FCC and other regulators' approval. Standards-based technologies are immediately available.

Skylo’s service is “live” across four continents, with more than 19,000 square miles of coverage, Gupta said. Additional announcements are coming as is more geographic coverage. The satellites that Skylo works with have as much as 60 feet of antenna array, he said: “They have a very loud mouth and very large ears to hear very, very light signals.” The company has been able to connect devices the size of an Apple AirTag directly to the satellite.

Sony’s ALT1250 chipset for the IoT, which has an option for satellite connectivity, is the company’s top seller, with more than 30 million shipped globally, said Dana Mizrahi, manager-product marketing at Sony Semiconductor Israel.

Sony launched its first generation of products using proprietary solutions before the 3GPP finalized NTN standards in Release 17, Mizrahi said. The second generation incorporates the new 3GPP specifications.

A top use case for NTN will be coverage extension, for areas that lack cellular coverage, said Ryan Anderson, product engineer at Japan’s Murata Electronics, a leading maker of IoT modules. About 40% of the U.S. lacks cellular coverage and “this is a big area that NTN can now cover,” he said. The second major use is as cellular backup when there’s a natural disaster or networks otherwise go down. For most applications, Murata sees cellular as “the main choice of communication” and NTN the secondary.

“There are many target applications and probably some that we have never thought of,” Anderson said. The biggest so far are for trackers and wearables, he said. Trackers can be for hikers, livestock and ships “as well as everything in between.” Wearables include sports watches and SOS devices, he said. “Being able to send your location in the middle of nowhere can be a true lifesaver.”

Murata has already tested its module for NTN throughout the U.S., Canada, Western Europe and Australia, Anderson said.

“It’s amazing to see how the industry is coming together” on standards-based NTN, Gupta said. “No one person or no one entity can do this alone.” Gupta said on the cellular side regulators in some countries are struggling with addressing NTN. “On the IoT side, it’s pretty straightforward,” he said. IoT devices have to be certified for use in different nations, but that’s the same certification process that applies to all new devices, he added.