IMS 2025: Why LEO Satellite Markets Are Brutally Exclusive and What to Do About It
With $10 billion dollars of investment required, are we really revolutionizing low-earth orbit (LEO) communication technology or merely adding to space debris?
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Big companies like SpaceX, OneWeb and AST SpaceMobile among others are spending billions of dollars in satellite technology to provide communications to rural and underserved areas. This was recently a topic of big debate when SpaceX violated the emissions spec set by the FCC setting off a space drama that was quite the spectacle.
The main question is whether such an expensive investment would prove to be profitable, or whether we have ended up putting an enormous amount of junk in space especially considering that thousands of satellites are required in a fully operational constellation.
Yesterday’s panel session at the 2025 International Microwave Symposium (IMS) was an interesting one that got a lot of heated debate about the space industry. In this post, I will explain what transpired in this 1.5 hour discussion panel with supporting information for context.
Here is an outline:
Why satellite LEO markets are hard to enter
What speeds are possible from LEO
Opportunities outside satellite communications
Direct-to-device (D2D): The low-hardware frontier
De-orbiting policies: Dealing with space debris
Read time: ~6 mins
