Secure SATCOM and Market Technology Report

The European Union (EU) needs independent, secure, resilient and high-speed space-based connectivity to satisfy the needs of EU institutions, bodies, agencies and Member States. Secure SATCOM provides one or two-way real-time, reliable, accessible and guaranteed satellite capacity/service for communications. 

The first edition of the EUSPA Secure SATCOM Market and User Technology Report provides insights into the varied contributions of secure SATCOM across a range of governmental applications. These applications are organised into three use case categories: Surveillance, Crisis Management, and Key Infrastructure. Collectively, the report explores a total of 13 comprehensive individual use cases. Unless specified, the report addresses aspects related to the secure SATCOM market and user technology in the EU, though some considerations (e.g. economic and technological trends) also apply at a global level.

The secure SATCOM Market and User Technology Report intends to build upon the growing investments made by the EU with the forthcoming EU GOVSATCOM component, which aims to provide secure and cost-efficient communication capabilities to security and safety-critical missions and operations, and the recently launched IRIS² initiative that will further expand the EU Space-based connectivity capabilities of the EU Space Programme.

The report addresses the market supply component of Secure SATCOM, both in terms of the industrial and governmental landscape and its forecasted demand in the period 2025–2040, as well as its technology components at the user level.

The user technology part provides an overview of the downstream technologies currently shaping the services and the associated industry. It identifies key trends such as the introduction of software defined satellites, the multi-orbital deployment of new satellite constellation systems, including in low Earth orbits, the increased capacity offered by High-Throughput Satellite (HTS) systems and higher frequency bands, optical communications, the deployment of multi-orbit and multi-band terminals and 5G efforts aimed at interoperability.

• The demand for Secure SATCOM services should grow by a factor of 14 over the 2025–2040 period, to reach almost 190 Gbps in 2040.
• Crisis Management accounts for almost half of the total capacity demand of secure SATCOM in 2025.
• User demand for secure SATCOM from mobile satellite services (MSS) is expected to increase from around 1.2 Gbps (2025) to 3.9 Gbps.