It is time IoT reaches global connectivity. With roughly 15% of the globe covered by cellular connectivity and the massive IoT expansion in all industries, we expect a significant increase in Satellite IoT (SatIoT) over the coming years. Together, terrestrial and SatIoT bring the best of both worlds to guarantee continuous communications. 

Like many companies worldwide, you probably have to connect assets all over the planet, exchange data, and receive feedback to keep your operations running smoothly. Your assets are valuable, and given the insights you can collect from them, IoT becomes crucial to day-to-day management. 

From monitoring power plants and oil & gas pipelines to farming and maritime solutions, you can automate millions of decisions and actions based on the data received from remote devices. Your business strategy then immediately benefits from significant time and cost savings. 

Yet for that to happen, you need always-on connectivity, and most companies cannot reach remote assets due to insufficient terrestrial coverage or prohibitively expensive satellite solutions. But today, there are more efficient alternatives in the form of SatIoT services. 

Short, medium and long-range networks like Bluetooth, NB-IoT (5G), and LoRaWAN enable IoT in densely populated regions. These terrestrial networks allow objects to connect to ground antennas, which relay the information to the cloud and the end-user IT infrastructure. 

However, their coverage relies on the proximity to those antennas, which have limited deployment in mountains, deep countryside, deserts, and even less on high seas. Moreover, the need for interoperability between these networks makes them hardly usable for global connectivity. Therefore, how can you monitor your fixed or moving assets within the remaining 85% of the world’s surface, uncovered by terrestrial connectivity? 

Here is when SatIoT comes into play: the satellite’s ubiquity allows IoT to operate beyond the limits of terrestrial networks. Thanks to small, low-power devices running for years with a single battery and embedded sensors, we observe a surge in SatIoT applications for monitoring moving assets across land and sea, such as containers, tank cars, livestock, or wildlife. 

While IoT can offer you regular updates on any parameter like temperature, pressure, moisture level, or any other need for maintenance, SatIoT ensures these updates never cease, regardless of your assets’ whereabouts. Complementary but more effective and robust, SatIoT fills the disadvantages of terrestrial solutions with disruptive technologies.

Satellite connectivity used to be cost-prohibitive because conventional broadband constellations are not built for IoT applications. With the use of off-the-shelf components and CubeSats – standard satellite format – and cheaper access to space thanks to new launch providers and standardisation, the NewSpace approach enables low-cost services suitable for IoT applications. 

With its growing Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation of state-of-the-art nanosatellites, Astrocast offers a reliable extension to all the terrestrial IoT networks, with a highly flexible service that does not require heavy investment and centralised infrastructure management like terrestrial solutions. 

Believing in hybrid communications, Astrocast is also working with partners and integrators to help them expand their terrestrial services through satellite coverage. Relentlessly, Astrocast makes SatIoT available and affordable to all: it provides direct-to-satellite connectivity for each asset and optimized end-to-end communication, so you can make the best of your business.  

Taking IoT Assets further with Astrocast 

If you’d like to learn more about how to take your IoT strategy further and how Astrocast’s flexible SatIoT service is delivering innovation in IoT, check our Astropreneur Programs.