- Entry barriers have dropped but infrastructure costs are still a major hurdle for new satellite players, said Hughes VP Patrick Markus
- Countries pursuing sovereign GEO and LEO strategies face especially steep costs
- It’s too early to predict SpaceX’s Starlink Mobile will reshape the communications landscape, Markus said
Despite a flood of new and aspiring players for satellite communications, cost remains a critical barrier for new entrants, said Patrick Markus, VP and general manager of Hughes Networks’ defense and government solutions division.
The barrier to entry for space is “much lower” than it was a decade ago, but the satellite business is “still fundamentally an expensive endeavor,” he told Fierce at SatShow 2026. “It comes with its own headaches and maintenance tale.”
Eutelsat’s Eva Bisgaard similarly noted one of the biggest misconceptions people have about satellites is that they’re cheap to deploy. There are a lot of moving parts in designing and assembling space and ground infrastructure, she said.
Rising interest in sovereignty is prompting more smaller countries to deploy their own geostationary (GEO) and low-earth orbit (LEO) constellations and “provide their own organic satcom capability,” Markus said.
To mitigate some of the cost of launching a proprietary satellite system, he thinks “sovereign slices” could help. A 3GPP-enabled satellite could create private network slices for countries, “so while they don’t necessarily own the satellite, they own their own slice of that,” he said. “There’s still a lot of innovation to come.”
Hughes’ satellite network
Hughes has historically focused on connecting rural communities through GEO satellites, though it’s expanded over the years to provide hybrid LEO/GEO managed services, like SD-WAN, to enterprise, government and aviation customers.
The company’s GEO fleet consists of three JUPITER satellites that provide internet service for consumers and businesses. Hughes doesn’t operate its own standalone LEO constellation; it partners with Eutelsat OneWeb to provide its managed services.
Through that partnership, Hughes supplies OneWeb with ground systems equipment and terminals, Markus noted. And Hughes last week announced its new Hughes LEO for Rail offering, which aims to help OneWeb expand LEO service to passenger and freight rail networks.
SpaceX, Starlink Mobile's impact on global connectivity
Hughes is a wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar, which last year agreed to sell nearly $20 billion in wireless spectrum to SpaceX. With EchoStar’s spectrum, SpaceX plans to launch a direct-to-cell (D2C) Starlink Mobile service – sparking talk of a terrestrial wireless shakeup.
Asked how he thinks Starlink Mobile will impact the telecommunications landscape, Markus said “it’s very early to tell.”
He noted SpaceX has demonstrated the ability to launch satellites at scale and at a high volume. Other players like Amazon Leo and Telesat are taking the approach of launching “fewer satellites, but longer-life satellites at higher altitudes. So certainly, there are different economies that come with that.”
Markus sees SpaceX as not just a pure-play connectivity provider but one that combines connectivity with AI and content generation. SpaceX’s $1.25 trillion deal to merge with xAI, announced in February, paves the way for that combination.