"Dot-com bombs, telecom meltdowns, mobile satellite bankruptcies, fiber everywhere. These and other issues have raised alarms about the future of the satellite business. And while that future is not likely to follow a straightforward path, opportunities do exist for those willing to navigate a flexible course."

Because of the long-lead time involved in satellite ventures, market forecasting is particularly important for this industry. Futron responded to this need over six years ago when it developed its first global forecast of satellite services.

Depending on client needs, Futron leverages this forecast to project the demand for satellites and launch vehicles. Futron's forecast covers the next ten years and it has several unique features:

1. It internally funded. As such, it is completely independent of all current or proposed satellite systems or organizations.
2. It is based on the demand for satellite services. This is a more rigorous and comprehensive approach than a supply-based forecast for a ten-year period.
3. It is a global forecast, evaluating over 200 countries and territories individually. It also uniquely forecasts sixteen different satellite markets.

Key findings of the Futron Forecast show that in both the short and longer term, there are opportunities as well as issues to be faced.

• The number of on-orbit geostationary commercial satellites grows by some 30% from 2001 to 2011.

• Demand for satellite services grows much more quickly than the number of satellites as a result of data compression, increasing number of transponders per satellite, and longer satellite life. Thus, in 36-MHz transponder equivalents, underlying demand grows by more than 75%.

• The largest demand growth will come in consumer services, such as last-mile broadband and DTH, expanding at a much faster pace than infrastructure services such as trunk telephony or ISP-to-backbone services.

• Success for satellite services will require careful timing to catch windows of opportunity as they appear in different regions. This is particularly true for the large, fast-growing, and extremely price-sensitive consumer services markets.

• Eastern Europe and the nations of the former Soviet Union lead in growth of broadcast channels, posting an average annual growth of 15 percent.

• Asia just beats out Eastern Europe for leadership in cable channel growth, with an anticipated 13 percent average annual gain forecast through 2011. However, advances in digitization and compression keep transponder growth below the growth in channels for both the broadcast and cable markets.

• Modest successes in high-definition and interactive television applications in the Western economies and Japan help keep broadcast and cable transponder requirements steady in North America and Japan, and in healthy growth figures of about 5 percent annually in Western Europe.

• High growth in DTH television applications, including aggressive growth in the developing economies of Asia and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, lead to a global forecast of DTH transponders that grows at an average annual rate of 10 percent. However, higher revenues per subscriber allow the Americas to retain its position as the leading market for DTH revenues.

• There will be exponential growth in Internet content availability and user bandwidth needs. The average user's bandwidth requirements grow ten-fold from 2001-2011.

• Growth in and size of end-user satellite telephone services markets will depend on ability of satellite companies to build out their services to the most rural of the rural markets.

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