By: Sridhar Kuppanna

The world is at an inflection point. As the demand for connectivity continues to surge, telcos have seen their risk landscapeover the past year, with growing threats linked to technology transformation, network performance, geopolitics, and evolving customer expectations. 

Traditional terrestrial networks alone cannot always meet these demands, particularly in underserved regions, during peak congestion, or in the face of natural disasters and emergencies.

This is where non-terrestrial networks (NTN) come in. With the growing demand for more dependable, scalable, and widespread connectivity in the 5G era, the Third Generation Partnership Programme (3GPP) introduced NTN into its 5G framework through 3GPP Release 17 and subsequent Release 18.

This collaboration positions the satellite industry to deliver seamless, ubiquitous connectivity worldwide. With this bridge between terrestrial and satcom infrastructure, connectivity can truly reach everywhere.

It also opens the door for satellite communications to move beyond traditional niche applications, playing a more central role in global communications while breaking free of technical and commercial silos that have historically hampered it.

This represents a revolutionary step forward in global telecommunications, unlocking the ability to deliver seamless, high-performance connectivity worldwide.

Satellites in the 5G era

Historically, satellite connectivity was a specialised solution for remote regions, such as at sea, adverse situations, such as disaster response, or defence applications requiring resilience at any cost, but that is rapidly changing. 

With the advent of 5G NTN, wireless networks have been re-architected to unify multiple access technologies, bringing together terrestrial mobile, fixed broadband, and satellite. This shift enables satellite networks to seamlessly converge with terrestrial networks, allowing satellite user equipment to become an integral part of the telco network fabric.

The 5G NTN standards enable the adaptation of technologies such as 5G Core, 5G Radio Access Technology (RAT), 5G New Radio (NR), and 5G User Equipment (UE) to satellite networks, all underpinned by the flexibility and scalability of a cloud-native ground system architecture. 

Together, these elements form the foundation for seamless connectivity, advanced services, and new business opportunities across satellite and terrestrial networks. They form the backbone of a dynamic and highly interoperable telecommunications ecosystem. 

By integrating these capabilities into overarching 5G NTN frameworks, operators can deliver reliable, efficient, and forward-looking solutions to meet the demands of an increasingly connected world. 

These technologies now play a growing role in supporting multicast services, efficiently distributing data and content at scale, while also delivering mobility access across aviation, maritime, and land transport. 

In doing so, satellites ensure that passengers, operators, enterprises, and communities remain reliably connected, no matter how rugged or isolated the environment. As a result, this extends telco's enterprise services to previously unreachable areas.

Reaching a significant milestone

Recently, the satellite industry achieved a significant milestone by demonstrating seamless integration with a 5G core Terrestrial system by making the satellite network appear fully 3GPP-compliant via Interworking Gateway Functions. This proof of concept allows satellites to complement, rather than compete with, mobile and fiber networks. 

The seamless interoperability of networks across multiple providers, powered by advanced 5G core capabilities, allows operators to gain enhanced operational flexibility, improved ROI, and the ability to offer differentiated services, while end users will benefit from uninterrupted, secure connectivity and high-quality application performance.

The milestone sets the foundation for inter-providing roaming among satellite network providers, just like existing mobile roaming agreements today. Crucially, satellite operators can integrate their networks into terrestrial without abandoning existing satellite waveform technologies like DVB-S2X and Mx-DMA MRC. This protects investments while paving the way for modernisation.