A station on the Horn of Africa, without building one
Satellite operators need ground stations in places that are often difficult to establish a presence in. We already have the site, the power, the fibre to four submarine systems and the staff on shift — in a location that is genuinely useful and genuinely hard to replicate. Nothing about this service requires you to have any other business in Somalia: the customers for it are constellation operators, space agencies and data companies, wherever they happen to be based.
The gap in your ground segment is on this longitude
Coverage maps have a hole over the western Indian Ocean and the Horn. Closing it usually means building somewhere difficult, or accepting a longer wait between contact and data. This is the third option.
Constellation operators
- The problem
- Passes over this region either go unserved or wait for a station on another continent
- What they host
- Antennas on our site, with the rack, power, backhaul and staffing already in place
- Latency to data
- Downlink to storage measured in metres, then onto four submarine systems from the same compound
Earth observation data companies
- The problem
- Imagery of this region is collected far more often than it is turned into anything usable here
- What they host
- Reception plus colocation for processing, so raw scenes do not have to leave the continent first
- Adjacent
- We also buy: our own Earth observation practice is a customer for this kind of capacity
Space agencies & research missions
- The problem
- A mission needs a station in an equatorial slot for a defined campaign, not a permanent asset
- What they host
- Temporary or campaign-length arrangements, with local regulatory work handled by us
- Regulatory
- We hold the relationships with the Somali authorities and will tell you plainly what is and is not permitted
Where we are the wrong answer
- Polar missions
- An equatorial site is close to useless for a sun-synchronous polar orbit needing high-latitude contacts. Svalbard exists for a reason
- Sub-second latency
- If your requirement is continuous contact rather than more passes, one more station does not solve it
- Our position
- We would rather say this in the first call than three months into an integration
The four things that make a ground station expensive to build
Antennas are the cheap part. What takes years is everything underneath and around them — which is exactly what already exists here.
Site & power
- Location
- A secured compound on Airport Road, Mogadishu, with clear sky and established access
- Power
- Fed from the same 2N infrastructure as the data centre, with generator and UPS behind it
Backhaul
- Onto subsea
- Cross-connect to four submarine systems inside the same compound
- Terrestrial
- Onto our own backbone and autonomous system, with direct peering
Processing & storage
- On site
- Colocation in the data centre metres from the antenna, rather than a link to somewhere else
- Residency
- Data can be held in country where a programme or a regulator requires it
Operations
- Staffing
- Engineers on shift around the clock, on the same site as the equipment
- Local capability
- Established relationships with the regulator and the practicalities of operating here
The honest comparison, including where we lose
Eighteen months before first pass
- Site acquisition, permits and regulatory approval in an unfamiliar jurisdiction
- Power and backhaul built from nothing, which is most of the cost and all of the delay
- Recruiting and retaining staff who can be on shift at the site
- An asset you own outright, and a maintenance obligation you own with it
Antennas on ground that already works
- Site, power, backhaul and staffing already in place and already operating
- Processing and storage metres away rather than across a leased link
- A partner who knows the regulator and the practicalities of working here
- But: our footprint, our site, and a commercial relationship rather than an asset
Tell us the constellation and the coverage gap
Send us the orbit, the band, the antenna footprint and what the passes have to achieve. We will come back on whether this site helps, what we can host, and what would need building — including if the answer is that we are not the right location.