COVID-19 Underscores the Critical Need for More and Better Connectivity
Isotropic Systems Has Cracked the Code for Next-Gen Communications
We are quite literally seeing the promising opportunities, amazing capabilities and even some persistent shortfalls of a connected world play out before our eyes, every day throughout this challenging pandemic.
Millions of homebound students are communicating with their teachers and classmates. Telemedicine is bringing isolated patients face-to-face with doctors and caregivers like never before. In fact, there’s been more digital healthcare delivered in the past six weeks than the past 20 years, according to the ITU.
Isolation, however, hasn’t been completely stamped out for those who don’t have access to high-speed broadband. Eliminating that gap will receive a heightened priority in the weeks and months ahead, I’m certain.
The role of satellite will become significantly more important and in demand as a result of what we’ve learned through this initial phase of the pandemic. With its reach, immediacy, nimbleness, and flexibility, satellite will enable us to be far better prepared for whatever comes our way in the post-COVID-19 world – whether we’re a school, a hospital, a government or business.
Business Continuity with the Purpose of Delivering a New Age of Connectivity
The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak and its impact on businesses and communities everywhere has demonstrated just how important our mission really is at Isotropic Systems – to unlock a new level of connectivity for government and commercial markets.
Like our colleagues around the world, we’ve taken precautionary measures to protect our people and to maintain business continuity across our teams and operations in the UK and US. We continue to connect with our customers and partners, laser focused on the development and delivery of our transformational multi-beam terminals.
With robust contingency plans in place and a team built for resilience, agility and innovation, we remain on track for our key milestones: over-the-air tests of our terminals with key partners this fall, key network certifications next year, and commercial rollouts as next-gen LEO and MEO capacity becomes available in early 2022.
Our unique optics-based beamforming antennas will enable a whole new level of satellite-delivered connectivity that will unleash the full potential of these new-age constellations. In two short years we will empower a wide range of markets, from defense, government and enterprise to aero, with the kind of high throughput connectivity they need to meet the insatiable demand to stay in touch with colleagues and friends, and, in the case of warfighters, to gain an edge on a formidable foe.
Crisis drives change and whilst COVID-19 underlines the growing and expanding need for new levels of connectivity, the satellite sector has however not been immune to the negative economic impact of a global shut-down and we have recently seen a number of companies filing for Chapter 11.
With that in mind, we are particularly proud, in these unprecedented times, that our unique technology has enabled us to win a major US defense contract and our teams have already begun supporting this exciting breakthrough project that will ultimately enable the US Government to leverage a new age of connectivity to help ensure a new level of national security around the world.
Nevermore that now, every single country in the world relies upon data connectivity to enable sharing of information and there’s no mistaking the ability of satellite to fill the communications gaps with global coverage. That’s something that satellite will always do better than terrestrial. Satellite simply and effectively brings the capacity where it is needed in a very short timeframe – no need to dig trenches, bury fiber cable, it’s just there.
Fast-forward two years and the world will have once unimaginable connectivity at its fingertips thanks to next-gen satellite systems in multiple orbits unleashed by next-gen antennas – ground infrastructure developed in part in the face of the first pandemic in 100 years.