Satellite Brings High-Speed Internet to Rural Areas - ETI
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April 7, 2021

Satellite Brings High-Speed Internet to Rural Areas

The following transcript has been edited for length and readability. Listen to the entire discussion here on The Broadband BunchThe Broadband Bunch is sponsored by ETI Software.

In this episode of the Broadband Bunch, we visit with Mark Wymer, Senior Vice President at HughesNet. HughesNet is a satellite service provider that brings broadband speeds to under and unserved communities. Discussion points include:

  • Satellite Services to the Unserved
  • Hughes: A Worldwide Footprint
  • Enabling Rural Broadband
  • Satellites and 5G
  • Jupiter 3 Next Gen Ultra High-Density Satellite
  • A Blanket of Connectivity

Craig Corbin:

Hello, everyone. And welcome to another edition of The Broadband Bunch. Along with my colleague Jeff Boozer, I’m Craig Corbin. Thanks so much for joining us. In 1971, a group of seven young engineers started a business in a suburban garage designing telecom circuit boards.

Craig Corbin:

Little did they know that, half a century later, their efforts would have evolved from such humble beginnings into an organization powering satellite and multi-transport solutions for millions of people, businesses, governments, and communities around the world. And one recognized as the global leader in satellite technology and services for home and office.

Craig Corbin:

Hughes Network Systems is a wholly-owned subsidiary of EchoStar, and Hughes Net provides high-speed satellite internet service to more than 1.3 million subscribers across the Americas. Our guest today is a member of the leadership team at Hughes Network Systems and is an entrepreneurial executive with a history of leading dynamic organizations through periods of transformation and growth.

Craig Corbin:

It is a pleasure to have with us the senior vice president for the North America consumer division of Hughes Network Systems, Mark Wymer. Mark, welcome to The Broadband Bunch.

Mark Wymer:

Hey. Thanks for having me guys.

Craig Corbin:

It is such an exciting time now. And to say that connectivity is essential, regardless of where you are on this globe, would be an understatement. But so much to talk about with regard to the role that Hughes plays in connecting people. But before we get into that, for those who might not be familiar overall with what Hughes does, give us that 30,000-foot overview. Also, if you could share how you came to this point with the Hughes organization.

Satellite Service to the Unserved

Mark Wymer:

Absolutely. I’d be happy to. As you duly noted, Hughes is a global leader. And as a satellite industry, we provide services to not only large enterprises to franchise businesses but also to consumers. We bring services to those areas where your traditional terrestrial services can’t. We take pride in doing so, and we deliver those services to a worldwide audience.

Mark Wymer:

It could be from here in our backyard, in one of the rural areas here in the US, to customers in South America, to customers in Africa. Wherever there’s a need for a high-speed connection, we’re producing and delivering services there.

Craig Corbin:

One of the thoughts that are so important in that conversation is Hughes’ approach of being driven to connect the unconnected. Of course, having invented satellite internet, Hughes has been involved from the get-go with this approach. Without question, you look at what has been the case for the last year and shining the white-hot spotlight on the need for connectivity for everyone.

Craig Corbin:

But knowing that Hughes has already been well into that game has to speak to what you are doing in the industry. Give us an overview from your perspective of how that importance for connecting the unconnected has increased even in the last year.

Mark Wymer:

Oh my goodness, 2020 was a milestone year. We’ve been delivering these services to the underserved, low-density areas for a long time. But when all of a sudden people’s livelihoods, they were forced to work from home, and their children’s education where they were schooling from home, required them to have a high-speed connection.

Mark Wymer:

We just saw exponential adoption during those periods of time. When you think about things that impact your life in that matter, your livelihood, your children’s education, all of our engineers turned their attention quickly to say, “How do we make sure that the services that we’re delivering at this point in time are meeting their needs?”

Mark Wymer:

Making those work from home applications, ensuring that those schooling from home applications are working over our network, and so those people that live in those areas and choose to live in those lower density, rural areas can still participate and their livelihoods wouldn’t be impacted. This year has just put the exclamation point on the importance of the services that we’ve been delivering over the years.

Jeff Boozer:

Mark, this is Jeff. Hello. To follow up on that, you serve a unique market segment of the unserved, or the rural underserved, and some unique mobility-requiring customers. Tell me a little bit of what you’ve learned that may be different about these customers than what we see as traditional broadband users?

Enabling Rural Broadband

Mark Wymer:

What’s interesting is when the folks that adopt our services, one … A lot of people have always said, “Well, they’re the laggards.” Well, they’re not the laggards at all. What they were forced to do is, when they drove into their offices or went to work on Monday and Tuesday, they were connecting to the internet from work and trying to get a lot of their activities done there.

Mark Wymer:

What we find and what we see is when the customers adopt our service, they begin to have a broadband service, a high-speed service into their home, it’s like everyone else. They’re doing their online banking. They’re communicating with their friends through social media. We’ve seen in this past year, a large number of customers adopt more streaming-type applications.

Mark Wymer:

At first, everyone says, “Well, they live out there, they can’t get it. They don’t participate in the internet economy.” Well, that’s just not really the case. Frankly, when they get our service, we enable that household to participate even more.

Jeff Boozer:

Do you see any difference in what kinds of usage they do or that they take advantage of? Or do they follow normal broadband user patterns?

Mark Wymer:

No. From what we see, they follow a normal broadband user pattern. We’ve seen streaming this past year has been one of the largest applications. I think any carrier or high-speed provider will tell you that. As people are moving, want that entertainment, as well as … As more of the streaming content becomes available, as the producers of that are trying to take it directly to the consumer, we’re seeing our customers adopt those services.

Craig Corbin:

Mark, you bring an interesting perspective to the world of satellite internet given your involvement with Hughes. But also, give us a bit of a background on how you became part of the team at Hughes and that perspective.

Mark Wymer:

Well, I became part out of necessity. I, myself, live in a rural community on a horse farm in Northern Virginia. In our area, we didn’t have high-speed internet when I bought and built my home there. And as I was looking for alternatives to get a high-speed connection, the satellite was there.

Mark Wymer:

And so, I’m a user from a long way back on some of Hughes’ earlier products, our DIRECWAY product, and each generation there forward. Not only do I work for the company, but I use the product too.

Craig Corbin:

I love it.

Mark Wymer:

Exactly.

Craig Corbin:

All of us that have grown up, myself in Western North Carolina, are well familiar with the importance of having satellite internet as that connection. And that is something that I think has made a tremendous difference. You made mention earlier in your remarks about ensuring the livelihoods of not only individuals, but the commercial viability long-term of communities based on whether or not they have that broadband connectivity.

HughesNet: A Worldwide Footprint

Craig Corbin:

And we tend to focus our thoughts predominantly many times on North America, but Hughes is involved in serving a much bigger footprint than that. Talk about, if you would, the importance of what Hughes does for communities in South America and other parts of the world.

Mark Wymer:

Absolutely. We’re very active in South America and in Mexico. We’ve delivered or began our services down there … I want to say approximately three years ago, is when we entered into South America. What’s interesting in those communities, is a lot of the areas are more agricultural. We are truly reaching out into rural areas that had no connectivity types previously. Even cellular to some extent.

Mark Wymer:

We’ve been able to make great inroads into those areas. Not only is it our satellite product per se, the services which I market here in North America … But in those communities to ensure that we could get the communities connected, we’ve partnered with community wifi and we deliver a community wifi service.

Mark Wymer:

What those services are is, we will find a central location in a small town or village in those given areas, we’ll enable a community wifi hotspot, and the residents of that community can come to that point. They can log on and they can use those hotspots to stay connected. What we see is they are … Your question earlier, as it related to, “What do people do?”

Mark Wymer:

Well, believe it or not, even in those areas the people who will go to those community hotspots are using communication applications. Some of them are doing e-commerce type applications, both purchasing as well as selling their wares out into a broader audience, base, et cetera. We said earlier, bringing high-speed connectivity into these rural areas is part of our DNA. We look at every technology possible to push it out there.

Craig Corbin:

Obviously, another part of the importance of that is working to connect the educational infrastructure, the schools that are out there. Talk about how Hughes is involved with that.

Mark Wymer:

Here in the States, the pandemic has really pushed that. But even before that, we’ve worked with partners in India and Africa, and South America to enable a teacher to be in one area, it could be a neighboring town or a village, and then communicate with students that are in a remote location.

Mark Wymer:

Just by having the connection there, they’re able to get the resources needed to educate the children in those given rural and remote areas. It’s a great way … We hear things about telehealth and tele-education and things of that nature. It’s not until you see firsthand, the impact that it can have on a community. Where you’re bringing the higher caliber, a teacher or schools into these areas, to help those communities progress forward.

Craig Corbin:

Absolutely.

Satellites and 5G

Jeff Boozer:

Mark, we all hear a lot about 5G and all kinds of new services coming along that line. What do you see on the horizon relative to satellite broadband and its participation along with the 5G and IOT, whether it’s personal or commercial?

Mark Wymer:

Our point of view on this is, as you want to blanket coverage, it’s going to take a multi-technology strategy. And every technology is going to play a role. Naturally, you have your terrestrial services, your fibers, your cables, even your DSL. Those are going to play very well in your more dense, more urban, suburban-type footprints. As you begin to propagate or push out from that, then you’re going to see 5G is going to play a role as it relates to extending that connectivity out.

Mark Wymer:

And then, naturally, you’re going to have satellite, which has been the strongest player out in the areas where the lowest densities are. Because, one, it’s expensive to build infrastructure to deliver these services. And at Hughes, what we’ve been doing is we’ve been working with the various technologies to make sure that, one, we’re interoperable, we can work with them.

Mark Wymer:

Some of the enterprise solutions that we deliver today, based on where their stores are, or their manufacturing, or even where their mining applications are … We work with a multi-technology mix to deliver a true network solution for those customers. We see that also beginning to extend its way into the residential businesses as well, with some of the services that are emerging where you see a satellite interacting with LTE or 4G, or satellite interacting with a 5G network as well.

Mark Wymer:

And then, today, it’s an exciting time to be in the satellite business, because there’s a new satellite category that’s emerging, which is the low earth orbit satellites. The LEOs. We’re excited that’s been coming into play because that delivers a low latency service and can address a lot of the quick-twitch type activities and applications that consumers and businesses are adopting.

Mark Wymer:

And then, when you marry that with the geo-services that we provide today, we’re just raw tonnage. We have a bandwidth that we can point it into a given area or location and deliver the heavier data needs of those customers in that given area. We see it as, it’s a fabric, and they’re all being weaved together to deliver the service that we can blanket the entire United States with.

Craig Corbin:

You’re listening to The Broadband Bunch and our guest today, senior vice president for Hughes Network Systems, Mark Wymer. Mark, your last remark there, a perfect segway into what we wanted to touch on next with regard to Hughes’ ability to handle the big tonnage.

Jupiter 3 Next Gen Ultra High-Density Satellite

Craig Corbin:

Because when we look at something that’s on the horizon for the second half of 2022, the anticipated launch of Jupiter 3, the next generation ultra-high-density satellite that will dramatically expand the capabilities of the Hughes Network … If I am correct, I believe that the total capacity of the Jupiter fleet, once Jupiter Three is in place, will be more than one terabit per second. Am I correct?

Mark Wymer:

When we put J3, Jupiter 3, into play, it’s going to double the size of our network. We’re so excited for that satellite to go into orbit and get it into service, so we can continue to deliver high-speed services to the rural areas and to our business partners. We should, with that product, see 50 and 100-megabit service plans.

Craig Corbin:

That is amazing. When we talk about the high throughput satellites, it’s such a phenomenal part of the discussion of being able to deliver services. Of course, when we’re talking about the geostationary, geosynchronous satellites, very different than what you just spoke about in the LEOs, the low earth orbit. Because you’re up against better than 22,000 miles in position there.

Craig Corbin:

With regard to what you anticipate the difference being to your subscribers when Jupiter 3 is in place, how do you see that changing the ability of Hughes to serve connectivity here in the Americas?

Mark Wymer:

Most importantly, even if you go back to some of the earlier satellites that we put up, you’ve seen a constant progression in terms of the speeds that we’ve been able to deliver. From one megabit, one and a half megabit, three megabits, then where it got to 10. And then, when our Jupiter 2 went up, that was a uniform 25 megabits per second. With J3, we’re looking at services that’ll be 50 megabits per second and 100 megabits per second.

Mark Wymer:

But also with the size, we’ll be looking at larger data allocations with our services. We’re seeing that household consumption is growing year over year, as the internet of things is being applied within the home. Multiple devices. Look at your own homes. If the kids are sitting on the couch, they’re playing, they’re streaming TV on the television.

Mark Wymer:

They’ve got their phone in front of them and their laptop, where they’re supposed to be doing their homework. It’s burning right next to them. There are all the multiple devices that are being connected and so forth. With Jupiter 3, we’re excited that we’re going to be able to deliver larger data allocations to the household because we know that’s the progression that consumers are making.

Craig Corbin:

That’s exciting. Of course, Jupiter 3 will be the first high throughput satellite to use the Q/V band for those feeder links that will enable you to optimize the amount of Ka-band available for customers all over the Americas.

Craig Corbin:

And we have focused the conversation on, obviously, consumer use, which is the focus of Hughes Net. But also, Jupiter 3 will have a huge impact in supporting in-flight wifi for those getting from spot to spot, maritime connections, your enterprise networks, as well as backhaul for mobile network operators. Talk a little bit about that.

Mark Wymer:

Yeah. You asked the question earlier about 5G, and if you think about 5G as it pushes out further, it’s going to need robust backhaul connectivity back to the internet. With Jupiter 3, we’re going to be able to deliver that type of backhaul to those towers.

Mark Wymer:

Allowing those towers to push out and allow those 5G services to move further, not only into the lower density areas but also in some of the more remote areas that you might find where businesses such as mining and forestry and others operate today, which are key industries that we serve today.

Craig Corbin:

Sure. I know, obviously, that there are challenges in any part of the broadband conversation. And I’m sure that a big challenge is knowing how to quickly optimize the capabilities that your fleet has in place. Talk, if you would, about how the future will be. Even beyond Jupiter 3, in that regard.

Mark Wymer:

If you think about how our fleet operates today, we have multiple generations of satellites that have emerged. Each one of them has been an advancement from their predecessor. A satellite has a life of 15 years. And so, as we look at each one of the strong points of those assets in our network, we’ll continue to leverage it for those types of services and optimizing it for that type of base, be it enterprise or residential.

Mark Wymer:

As you move up that spectrum to the newer satellites that we’ll be launching with J3 and things that we’re looking at into the future, those services … We’ll be really looking at, what are the customers using? Be it enterprise or residential. How do we need to continue to evolve and build those technologies and those advancements into our network?

Mark Wymer:

I alluded to it earlier, as consumption continues to grow, we’ll look at, how do you continue data compression? How do you use AI to get it smarter in terms of routing and the pathing? And then, how do those networks begin to evolve and incorporate other technologies, such as your LEOs or your 5Gs and so forth, for data augmentation within that network? It’s an exciting time. It’s a complex equation. And we have a whole host of engineers that are working around the clock to stay ahead of that.

Craig Corbin:

Excellent. Jeff, I think you had a follow-up?

Jeff Boozer:

Yeah. Mark, along the same lines, you’ve talked about Jupiter 3 doubling the size of your network, and then the LEO’s bringing in the low latency. What kinds of new market opportunities are you looking at, thinking about?

Jeff Boozer:

Do you see out there … I’m not asking you to give away the keys to the strategy, but interested in what you guys see as emerging opportunities to leverage your networks and technology?

A Blanket of Connectivity

Mark Wymer:

Well, I think all you have to do is walk into your home each day. Who would have thought years ago that your refrigerator had a wifi connection and was talking to you? Who would have thought that you needed a connection to your washer and dryer to tell you when your clothes were done? There used to be a little bell that would ding there.

Mark Wymer:

I never thought that I would want to be turning on my lights from my office, so when I got home the dogs didn’t bark, et cetera. As you look out into the future, everything is requiring that high-speed connection, the term, “internet of things,” that everybody gravitating to. Our cars are updated every day. They’re sending data back to the manufacturers to tell them how they’re progressing or they’re updating the software.

Mark Wymer:

As you think about that, it goes back to what I said earlier. There has to be a blanket of connectivity across the United States that all of these internet-of-things are going to work with. And that’s what we’re trying to build out, as well as be an integral part to, as not all of those areas are going to be in nice suburban and urban footprints. You’re going to still want to cover those rural highways that are running.

Mark Wymer:

And you’re still tracking that package that’s on that truck, or that airplane that’s flying over the agricultural section of a given country. You still want to have some connectivity there. There’s a ton of applications when you think about the network as just this blanket that all of these new industries and verticals are going to be operating under.

Craig Corbin:

That’s fantastic.

Jeff Boozer:

That’s interesting. We could have a whole second section on that. Vehicle telemetry as a whole topic by itself. That’s really interesting.

Craig Corbin:

Absolutely. And we’ll go ahead and look forward to a second visit, Mark, if it works out down the line, to explore that. So many areas we can talk about with this, and we do greatly appreciate you sharing with us today. As we wind down toward the end of our conversation, wanted to wrap up with one last question.

Craig Corbin:

And it’s one that we ask virtually all of our guests. Obviously, there’s a reason that you are part of such a dynamic organization that’s making a difference around the world. What’s the driving passion for you individually with regard to the mission at Hughes?

Mark Wymer:

Well, I alluded to it. I jumped into it because I lived it. I wanted to live in a rural area. I wanted to have a nice plot of land. I didn’t want to look at my neighbor’s window every night. But I’m a professional. I still needed to have a high-speed connection to have my professional job and participate in the marketing career that I wanted to pursue. That’s what drove me. It’s an incredible inning and a great challenge when you step back for a moment and look across our country.

Mark Wymer:

Or if you’ve driven across our country and you see how much of the area is still undeveloped, as well as the folks that choose to live in those areas … For me, it’s all about it, I just want to make sure that if John or Jane chooses to live in a rural community and they want to start a cider business, that they can sell their cider anywhere. And the internet allows them to have that. It’s the great equalizer. I wanted to make sure that everybody has that opportunity.

Craig Corbin:

And that’s very much in keeping, Mark, with part of the mission of Hughes. A half-century connecting the world, and being driven to connect the unconnected. Can’t thank you enough for being with us today.

Craig Corbin:

It’s been great. We’ve enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about what’s going on at Hughes Network Systems. And I can’t wait for another opportunity to visit down the road.

Mark Wymer:

Well, just send me the invitation gentlemen. It’s been a true pleasure.

Craig Corbin:

Excellent. Excellent. On behalf of Jeff, and everybody here, I’m Craig Corbin. Thanks again for letting us be a part of your day. We’ll see you next time, right here on The Broadband Bunch. So long, everybody.