Q&A: Inmarsat CEO on catching the data wave

Despite much of the developing world and North America still lacking decent mobile connectivity, Inmarsat's CEO this week told silicon.com that the company has no plans to offer services to consumers in such telecoms deserts.

Nevertheless, the company announced its first foray into the hand-held portable satellite phone market after concluding a tie-up with terminal maker ACeS for a dual-mode GSM and satellite device.

Inmarsat CEO Andy Sukwaty said: "It's not a consumer service, it's not a road warrior service, it's meant for those people who really want to communicate and are willing to live with the limitations of satellite. With satellites, I don't care whose satellite it is, you have to see the satellite - you need line of sight in order to communicate with it and that has its limitations."

The company has, however, experimented with phones for villages in the developing world and would consider supplying some low volume services in areas such as China or Russia. Sukwaty said: "There could be exceptions... Never say never."

But rather than set its sights on milking consumers, Inmarsat believes the demand for data, in part satisfied by the increasing bandwidth of traditional mobile networks, will transfer across to the satellite network.

Currently data rather than voice is Inmarsat's cash cow, accounting for 75 per cent of the company's traffic and 55 per cent of its revenue, growing at 15 per cent per year. The company believes the world's growing love of data services will blossom into what Sukwaty describes as a "healthy niche". The satellite handheld market is currently worth $350m per year.

He said: "The reason this has become important, even though terrestrial mobile networks have grown significantly in size, is the dependence... both from a business and personal perspective, on these wireless applications (voice and data) is growing - people want to use them in these remote environments. We go where terrestrial networks don't go or where they don't go particularly well or don't go in a uniform way."

The company is also considering how the evolution of mobile phone functionality can inspire the satellite terminals.

Sukwaty told silicon.com that more data-centric features are likely to be part of future handheld devices. Text services, video playback and even potentially videoconferencing are under consideration for the coming cycle of devices, within the next three to five years.

And with smart phones becoming ubiquitous across the enterprise and public sector, the satellite business is considering taking some inspiration for devices from the exec 'must have' - a satellite BlackBerry could be on its way.

Inmarsat's satellite speeds, too, will see some changes as the world grasps the data nettle. Sukwaty said: "It will, over time, expand."