Inmarsat partners with Airbus for massive GX network upgrade

30th May 2019 07:18

(Sharecast News) - Satellite communications giant Inmarsat announced on Thursday that Airbus Defence & Space has been selected as its satellite manufacturing partner, as part of what it called a "ground-breaking" development of its 'Global Xpress' (GX) network.The FTSE 250 company said the partnership would provide a "step-change" in GX's capabilities, capacity and agility for the benefit of existing and future Inmarsat customers, partners and investors.It said its GX network was first designed in 2010, and began global services in 2015, creating "the world's first and only" seamless global mobile broadband network.Inmarsat said it had since grown GX revenues strongly, and established "leading" positions in the emerging global maritime, aviation and government mobile satellite broadband markets, with GX revenues increasing by 85% to $250.9m in 2018.The company claimed GX was the most successful network for global mobility.It said the announcement on Thursday marked the beginning of the next phase of GX's evolution, enhancing global mobile broadband coverage with a transformation in network capacity and service capability.The transformation, together with the agility of the next-generation satellites, would ensure GX remained "at the forefront" of innovation for the benefit of customers and partners."This contract with Airbus is for the manufacture of three next-generation GX satellites - GX7, GX8 and GX9 - with the first scheduled to launch in the first half of 2023," the Inmarsat board said in its statement."The level of capital expenditure under this programme is in line with that provided for in our long term planning."As such, there is no change to our overall capex guidance on the back of today's announcement."The new satellite programme would "transform" Inmarsat's global network, the board explained, providing "unprecedented agility" in space segment deployment, as well as an enhanced ability to adopt and integrate future technology innovation to the GX product line.It said the network development encompassed a "major enhancement" to the GX ground network as well, which would deliver full integration of each generation of GX satellites to form a "highly-secure, inter-operable, ultra-high performance" network.Future GX satellites offering new capabilities could be easily added to the framework whenever and wherever demand dictated, with the network also able to benefit from future technology innovation.The company said the network would be tailored automatically to the fluid nature of customer demand in global mobile broadband markets, which would maximise the efficient deployment of diverse capabilities and enable them to be mobilised instantaneously.As such, Inmarsat said it would continue to offer "the highest quality, best-value" mobile broadband services and solutions to customers and partners around the world.The new GX technology would also be compatible with existing terminals, allowing customers to benefit from planned and future service enhancements.Through regular upgrades by Inmarsat to the GX network capabilities and features, customers would be able to take advantage of future technology innovation."Having established leading positions in the emerging global maritime, aviation and government mobile satellite broadband markets, Inmarsat is on track to achieve its objective of delivering annual GX revenues at a run rate of $500m by the end of 2020," the board explained."Today's announcement reaffirms Inmarsat's confidence to sustain this growth beyond 2020, whilst simultaneously driving a sustained and meaningful moderation in its infrastructure capex."It said a clear advantage of the Airbus production line approach was the accelerated satellite deployment capability.That capability, together with Inmarsat's established GX customer base, would ensure that new capacity could be quickly and accurately matched to demand, leading to a better outcome for customers and a lower risk infrastructure investment programme. "On its launch in 2010, Global Xpress revolutionised satellite telecommunications and, even in 2019, GX remains the world's only truly seamless global mobile broadband network," said Inmarsat chief executive officer Rupert Pearce."As such, I am delighted today to announce the next steps in GX's development, in partnership with Airbus, which will ensure that our customers continue to benefit from GX's ground-breaking technology and capabilities for many years to come."Worldwide demand for mobile broadband connectivity has grown exponentially in recent years and we expect this trend to continue."Pearce said the next phase in the evolution of the GX network would provide a "dynamic and powerful" answer to the challenges created by that growth in demand, building on the strong foundations the firm had already established."Significantly, our new approach in collaboration with Airbus and other technology partners will provide us with much greater velocity and agility with which to respond to future competitive challenges and to adopt new technologies on a highly dynamic, rolling basis."We are delighted to be partnering with Airbus who have more than risen to the significant strategic and technological challenges we set them."This announcement signals the start of a new long-term strategic partnership."GX had "rapidly" become a "very significant and sustained" revenue growth contributor for Inmarsat, Pearce added, saying that more importantly, it embodied the company's strategic, long-term approach to network augmentation as it continued to meet and exceed customer requirements."In our 40th year, we move forward with a radical new model which builds on our existing GX investments to deliver a step-change in future GX services and in our ability to help our diverse customer base capitalise on the opportunities afforded by a digital society."Airbus' head of space systems, Nicolas Chamussy, said the company was launching the Onesat product line for Inmarsat following the successes of the Airbus-built Inmarsat-4 spacecraft, Alphasat and the Inmarsat-6 satellites, currently under construction."This latest contract continues the long standing innovation relationship between Airbus and Inmarsat," Chamussy said."Onesat is a truly disruptive product, both from a manufacturing and operational point of view, which allows Airbus to offer our customer a market enabling solution with reduced cost and time to orbit."