Hamid Akhavan
Analyst · Ric Prentiss of Raymond James. Your line is now open
Yes. That’s a great question. So, the S-band story has evolved for the world, not just for EchoStar. If you think about it all the way till about, I don’t know, a year ago or so, there was no standardization around connectivity to the satellite from direct device, from handsets, from 5G NTN, etcetera. So, the business model for S-band would have been – that’s exciting, significantly smaller, perhaps not even exciting in many ways, given the cost of the launch and maintenance of the LEO system for specialized devices. But as the 5G NTN standardization has happened, that restriction, that limitation has been moved and in fact now looks very exciting. If you could just come to the devices – the consumer devices that are just normal devices that consumers have in their pockets, it’s exciting from the perspective of the end customer basis perspective. They use in normal device, they don’t carry a specialized device. They don’t have to have a second device. And also it’s very exciting from the perspective of a supplier and provider of the service where you don’t have to subsidize, you don’t have to design, develop, manufacture, distribute specialized terminals. So, the game has changed. But remember, that game has only changed in the past 12 months. That game – that’s a new game. Now, if one wants to bring a service based on 5G NTN to the market, it requires the ecosystem of the 5G NTN. I just mentioned that the devices would have to come from the device manufacturers and they would have to be sold and populated in the market. We are just a couple or 3 years away from those devices being in significant proliferation, right. I mean the standard is just set. It will take a couple of years for the – chips has to be manufactured, to the chipsets to make it to the terminals and terminals to be populated through sales. I mean the existing devices would not work, you need the next-generation ramp up. So, when you look at all that, that kind of drives the timing and you have an element of ecosystem. You can’t – no player, no single player in the market can walk in and say, I have it all. There is no single player. It doesn’t matter who you look at, handset manufacturer, satellite manufacturer, service provider, carrier, operator, you can’t, you get none. So, it will require the collaboration and partnership of a number of players to make that work. That’s why it takes time. And that’s why it also is not prudent to make announcements unilaterally when you don’t have all of the elements that is required to develop that ecosystem and all the agreements and financials in place were it to become a reality. That’s why you are not going to hear from us any sort of premature announcements, any announcements that will just give you one angle of the picture, but not the full picture. But having said that, I want to mention that we are very focused on it. We understand the opportunity. We understand the size of the market perhaps better than anybody else, even – that we have manufactured terminals for almost every satellite manufacturer provider out there. We have been in satellite to handset connectivity in Europe in our EML, European mobile business. We have done that. We are doing it today to specialized devices in LoRa. And we understand the space, but we don’t want to come in with premature information releases which is not helpful neither for investors nor for our ultimate customers. I hope that answers your question to some degree.