Barbara Pareglio, Senior Technical Director at the GSMA, explains how the mobile and satellite industries are working together to advance non-terrestrial networks, and looks ahead to the GSMA’s focus at M360 ASEAN and World Space Business Week
Earlier this year, I wrote about how the mobile and satellite industries are working towards a future in which users can move seamlessly between terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks (NTN). Since then, the market has continued to move quickly, with satellite services expanding, new operator partnerships being announced and direct-to-device (D2D) connectivity moving closer to commercial scale.
According to GSMA Intelligence, 151 operators now have satellite services that are live, in testing or planned, representing an addressable footprint of around six billion mobile connections worldwide. The growing visibility of services such as Starlink reflects increasing demand for connectivity beyond the reach of terrestrial networks. At the same time, the number of satellite providers and mobile operators entering the market is increasing, making interoperability more important than ever.
From bespoke services to global interoperability
Today’s satellite ecosystem includes a range of technical and commercial approaches. Some services are built around 3GPP standards and designed to integrate closely with mobile networks, while others are proprietary or only partially standardised. This diversity is helping to drive innovation, but it also highlights the importance of interoperability as the market scales.
Mobile users already benefit from roaming agreements and common standards that allow their devices to connect across networks around the world. Ultimately, satellite connectivity should evolve in a similar way, enabling users to move between terrestrial and satellite networks without needing specialist devices, separate subscriptions or entirely different user experiences.
The next phase of NTN will therefore depend on creating frameworks that allow networks, devices, and services to work together at scale. This is particularly important as services such as Starlink demonstrate the different approaches being taken across the satellite market, alongside deployments based more closely on 3GPP standards.
Turning standards into services
This is where the GSMA’s NTN Community and Working Groups continue to play an important role. Since the start of the year, work has progressed across several groups to support terrestrial and satellite interoperability. The Terminal Steering Group (TSG) is continuing its crucial work on how devices select and move between terrestrial and satellite networks, helping to ensure a consistent user experience across different access technologies. In tandem, the Networks Group (NG) is advancing work on NTN roaming, including work covering both NTN-to-terrestrial and NTN-to-NTN roaming and updates to industry frameworks that support roaming relationships between operators and satellite providers.
The Wholesale Agreements and Solutions Group (WAS) is also developing commercial frameworks to help simplify agreements between satellite and terrestrial operators and support NTN roaming at scale. Together, this work is helping translate 3GPP standards into practical technical and commercial models that can be adopted across the wider ecosystem.
Throughout this ongoing work, the GSMA NTN Community has grown to more than 60 participating organisations, bringing together expertise from across the mobile and satellite sectors to help shape the future of NTN deployment and interoperability.
Looking ahead to M360 ASEAN and World Space Business Week
These topics will be high on the agenda at M360 ASEAN in Kuala Lumpur and World Space Business Week in Paris this month, where mobile and satellite stakeholders will explore how non-terrestrial networks (NTN) can move from early deployments towards commercial scale. Across both events, GSMA will contribute to discussions spanning spectrum harmonisation, 3GPP standardisation, hybrid connectivity and the commercial, regulatory and ecosystem conditions needed to accelerate NTN adoption across different markets.
M360 ASEAN
At M360 ASEAN, we will explore NTN’s path from early commercialisation to hybrid connectivity on Thursday 10 September from 11:45-13:00 on the Summit Stage in Grand Salon 1. Later that day, from 14:30-15:45 in Grand Salon 2, a dedicated roundtable will look at how Asia-Pacific can accelerate NTN commercialisation and build the ecosystem needed for scale.
World Space Business Week
During World Space Business Week in Paris, we will continue the conversation through a GSMA x MSSA Executive Roundtable on the morning of Tuesday 15 September, followed by our NTN Connections and Cocktails mixer later that day. We will also join the main stage Industry Dialogue with Mario Maniewicz, Director of the ITU Radiocommunication Bureau, on Wednesday 16 September at 9:45.
At these events, we will explore how satellite roaming could evolve, the role of standards in avoiding fragmentation, what the rise of providers such as Starlink tells us about the market, and how satellite services can become a more integrated part of the wider mobile ecosystem. The discussions at M360 ASEAN will also look closely at the Asia-Pacific opportunity, including the commercial models, spectrum and licensing approaches, regulatory readiness, device and chipset development, customer ownership and ecosystem collaboration needed to scale hybrid terrestrial-satellite connectivity across the region.
The GSMA is also continuing to support the ecosystem with practical resources and forums for collaboration, including a new whitepaper on the evolution and future direction of 3GPP standardisation for non-terrestrial networks and a case study with Terrestar in collaboration with MSSA. Together, these resources look at the technical implementation of NB-IoT NTN, standards alignment, satellite-enabled mobile services, direct-to-device ecosystem development, SNO–MNO collaboration, monetisation models and practical use cases. Later in September, GSMA and MSSA will also host a webinar on building the direct-to-device ecosystem, bringing together satellite operators, mobile operators and partners to explore deployment, technical standards and commercial readiness.
As the market develops, collaboration across the mobile and satellite industries will be essential to ensure satellite connectivity seamlessly integrates with today’s mobile networks. The GSMA’s NTN Community and Working Groups provide a forum for stakeholders from across the ecosystem to contribute to this work and help shape the standards, frameworks and commercial approaches needed for the next phase of NTN.
For more on this work, revisit our January blog on combining satellite and cellular connectivity, explore the accompanying slides, and read the latest GSMA Intelligence Satellite and NTN Tracker for data on market momentum. If you are attending M360 ASEAN or World Space Business Week, we look forward to continuing the conversation on how the mobile and satellite industries can work together to scale interoperable NTN services.