The global market for SatCom services is estimated to reach EUR 126 billion by 2025 and the SatCom equipment market is projected to increase to EUR 25 billion by 2022, up from EUR 16.7 billion in 2017. GOVSATCOM may generate up to 5,000 jobs in the EU and the impact of the programme will be felt by industries far beyond what we normally tend to think of as ‘space based’.
GOVSATCOM offers huge potential for the EU as an engine of innovative growth in a number of different sectors: security, interoperability, software-defined radio, portability, digital payloads, LEO satellite constellations, very high throughput satellite (VHTS) payloads, and optical space communication.
GOVSATCOM users
GOVSATCOM will serve governmental users in the EU entrusted with tasks relating to the supervision and management of emergency and security-critical missions, operations and infrastructures, Union or Member State public authorities, and bodies or natural or legal persons entrusted with tasks relating to the supervision and management of security-critical missions, operations and infrastructures.
Three main GOVSATCOM use cases have been identified:
- Crisis management, including maritime emergency, humanitarian aid, civil protection, law enforcement, EU external action, and forces deployment;
- Surveillance, such as border and maritime surveillance, or surveillance of illegal trafficking;
- Key infrastructure, such as transport infrastructure, EU space infrastructure such as Galileo and EGNOS, and other critical infrastructure.
There may also be some specific use cases, for example in the polar regions, in RPAS command and control and in the areas of machine to machine (M2M) communication and the IoT.
EUSPA is responsible for coordinating the GOVSATCOM user network and analysing user needs and requirements to build a user perspective and assess market trends. EUSPA will also generate market and user technology intelligence focusing on space services for governmental users and synergies between the secure services offered by the space programme components.
EUSPA has already established a wide network of users consisting of Member State and EU Agencies, and has launched a European-wide survey aimed at identifying user requirements and use cases for future EU GOVSATCOM services.