Communication in all orbits: Alexey Volin spoke about the need for cooperation between GSO and NGSO constellations at the "Strong Russia" Business Summit
Representatives of the Ministry of Transportation, as well as Roscosmos State Corporation, Aeroflot PJSC, Gazprom PJSC and other industry experts also spoke at the event.
Talking at the session “Space Projects of the Future: “Sphere” as a basis for economic and technological independence of Russia” Alexey Volin named challenges the Russian satellite industry is facing and the measures required to address them.
Recent events show that foreign telecommunications companies tend to become unreliable partners. They breach their commitments: they block Russian users, refuse to provide payloads for spacecraft, ground equipment, components and spare parts, and to update software. Therefore, Russian operators need to provide domestic customers and consumers with satellite services throughout Russia by using their own resources.
RSCC has a powerful resource to support this request, and not only in Russia, but also abroad: for example, 58 countries around the world use the services provided by Russian Satellite Communications Company. However, the need for satellite communications will increase over time. A multi-orbit system combining the advantages of GSO and NGSO vehicles will be able to satisfy it and provide the customer with all necessary services at a time.
“Therefore, we're really pin hopes on the “Sphere” program, which is supposed to redistribute part of the traffic to medium- and low-orbit satellites. This is exactly the situation when we, as a GEO operator, are extremely interested in the new constellations to arise in order to focus on those services that no one else can provide," emphasized Alexey Volin.
However, it should be clear that there will be no alternative to geostationary orbit until 2030, i.e. until the NGSO systems are fully operational. Until then the NGSO constellations will only be able to work in conjunction with the GSO.
“Our colleagues from Roscosmos and we are thinking about eventually moving to cooperation in the provision of operator services after the launch of all “Sphere” projects. It is necessary so that the customer does not need to choose between the GSO-satellites, "Express-RV", "Skyph", "Marathon", "Gonets" projects and others, but could have all the necessary services in one place", - summed up the Director General of RSCC.