Satellite Mobility World interviews ABS CEO, Mark Rigolle

Having held leadership roles at SES, O3b Networks, Leosat, and others, how have these experiences shaped your approach to leading ABS?

One of the problems in the FSS sector is that there are too many people who only know the traditional GEO segment. They think the transition from GEO wide beam to HTS is a revolution. My background in terrestrial telecom, FSS, and NGSO has given me a wider vision. I can see which applications best fit each type of capacity and how the various providers, terrestrial fixed & mobile, GEO and NGSO can work together and produce more stable and robust solutions for real customer problems.

How has the quasi-government origin hindered the ability of the traditional GEO operators to respond to the sudden incursion of LEOs?

You can notice GEO operator’s government heritage. A typical GEO satellite is built for a fifteen-year lifespan and is costly to manufacture and launch. It’s a slow-moving culture burdened by the pursuit of perfection and ultimate reliability. That is understandable for the satellite-related part of those companies because if something goes wrong in space, you can’t send someone to fix it. The problem is that the same mindset pervades the whole organization of FSS operators which makes them very slow moving organisations. This is unlike the commercially oriented LEO industry, which builds thousands of satellites with life spans of five to seven years. So, it is easy to understand the obstacles GEO operators face as they struggle to compete with fast-moving, entrepreneurial companies like Starlink. It just isn’t in their DNA to be agile.

ABS recently faced significant financial challenges, including bankruptcy nearly three years ago. What specific steps are you taking to stabilize operations and rebuild market confidence?

The financial restructuring was nothing out of the ordinary. For instance it also happened to Intelsat. It was the private equity owners who when debt was abundant and cheap leveraged the companies with unsustainable debt which forced them into bankruptcy. Now, our former bond and debt holders are our equity owners. We have a pristine balance sheet with only a 1 X EBITDA debt load. I don’t think any satellite operator is in better financial shape than we are.

As of February 2025, ABS operates a fleet of five satellites, including ABS-2, ABS-2A, ABS-3A, ABS-4 and ABS-6. They provide coverage across various regions, including Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Russia, and the Americas, offering services such as broadcasting, broadband internet, and data connectivity. Given the emerging competition from LEO satellites, what is your long-term vision for ABS, and how do you plan to position the company in the competitive satellite communications market?

We have escaped most of the damaging headwinds experienced by major satellite operators. Our exposure to video is limited, and we don’t do any consumer broadband. ABS has always focused on enterprise broadband and mobile backhaul, areas where NGSOs have, so far, played only a limited role.

A good example is the cruise industry. While passenger broadband is increasingly relying on LEO, the enterprise data paths of the traffic remain on GEO. While LEO is “best efforts” and good enough for passenger and crew welfare and allows the cruise line to minimize costs. However, SLA-backed GEO is the only medium which can reliably support critical ERP cloud-resident applications and ensure the arrival of every data packet. Connectivity needs to be guaranteed, it can’t be “best efforts.” This is the type of traffic where GEO operators have a defensible position until LEOs can offer similar SLA-backed connectivity without degrading their consumer services. That’s a significant challenge for any LEO system.

Do you plan to partner with LEO operators or integrators as part of a multi-orbit solution for mobility markets?

We are developing the ability to bundle GEO capacity with NGSO, to have it available in product catalogue, but for us, selling to mobility is no different than selling to any other enterprise network. We are a bandwidth wholesaler with C and Ku-band wide beam capacity and do not sell directly to the end customer. For example, in cruise and maritime and energy sectors, we sell to integrators like Speedcast, Marlink and Viasat Energy Services, who will integrate our GEO capacity with NGSO solutions like Starlink, OneWeb, Kuiper, Telesat or others.

We also resell through telcos, where we may support various applications, including satellite connectivity to banks lacking good terrestrial infrastructure or mobile operators for backhaul applications.

Lastly, we may sell capacity to GEO operators who need alternate capacity, as in Intelsat’s case, which recently lost two of its Epic HTS satellites.

What are ABS’s principal competitive advantages as you compete against other satellite operators?

Agility is one of our principal advantages. We can be much more responsive to customer needs than large satellite operators. We’re also a small and fast-moving company, much like an entrepreneurial start-up. So, if we receive a special request, we can quickly act on it. All the decision-makers are here in our Dubai office. If a salesperson comes into my office with a special request, we can discuss it and decide.

The “beyond space” part of our name is more aspirational. It expresses the realization that we are only part of a solution, and we understand how we fit into the ecosystem. This advantage is rooted in my team’s broad-based experience, which extends across the satellite and telco industries and is typically not present in GEO satellite culture.

How do you see multi-orbit constellations shaping the future of satellite communications, and what role will ABS’s new Ka-band satellites play in this evolution?

We look at the market with amazement as we see GEO operators defending their market positions by reselling LEO capacity. They are reselling LEO to protect their existing customer relationships, ensure “always on” connectivity, and reduce costs, which makes sense, and I understand why GEO operators do it. However, it’s aiding the transition from GEO to LEO. It gives LEO operators an additional sales channel, and, more importantly, it allows them to overcome their inability to boost capacity in high-demand areas.

It’s economically impractical for a LEO operator to add capacity to serve demand hotspots. They would need to add an entire new orbital “shell” in which the satellites would be idle over most of the Earth. The business case deteriorates every time they build a new shell to augment coverage in another area. Sooner or later the LEO operators will “hit that wall” and conclude that GEO satellites are critical to closing their business case.

So, I believe that ultimately, there must be some marriage of convenience in which the LEO operators either resell GEO capacity or acquire GEO operators, a scenario that becomes increasingly practical as the valuation of GEO operators deteriorates.

We have military and commercial Ka-band slots over the Middle East and Southeast Asia, which is valuable real estate, and we are now looking for the best way to develop it with our two orbital slots. We’re positioning ourselves as a potential strategic partner to co-develop new satellites or ,why not, even as an acquisition candidate by targeting these high-demand areas with new Ka-band capacity.

Demand for GEO capacity is shrinking in video and mobility markets. In response, GEO operators are buying LEO capacity. You suggested LEO operators could be acquiring GEO operators. Given the shrinking demand for GEO capacity, would it be less expensive for LEO operators to launch their small GEO satellites?

The key to the answer is filings. While buying large GEO operators may not be economical, it might make sense to make a few targeted acquisitions of smaller operators and fold them into a LEO offering. You get the existing filings, many of which cover high-demand hot spots, satellites already in place, and regulatory priorities, ensuring a rapid and seamless entry into FSS.

Besides launching a small satellite to compete with one already generating business doesn’t make economic sense. While using a smaller satellite reduces CAPEX and risk, no one has yet convincingly demonstrated that it reduces the cost per bit, which is why companies like Viasat are continuing to build ever-larger satellites like Viasat-1, Viasat 2- and Viasat-3. However, to gain the economic advantage of the large satellite, you must fill it to near capacity. So, it depends on the individual business case. In cases where demand for FSS is falling, a small satellite could have an economic advantage. However, in a condosat model where several operators share a GEO, the utilization rate could be high enough to favor the larger satellite. Accurately forecasting fill rates is key, but it has also become increasingly challenging, both for small or large GEOs. That’s why there are so few satellite orders compared to ten years ago.

Can you elaborate on ABS’s use of the condosat model? How does this approach align with your broader business goals?

When I mentioned we are working with partners to develop our two orbital slots, that is the approach we are pursuing. It could take the form of co-investment or take-or-pay commitments. We already have beams on our satellites that were pre-sold for the satellite’s life. That model worked twenty years ago and can still work today.

Soon, OneWeb, Kuiper, Telesat, and the Chinese Thousand Sails constellation will compete against each other in the LEO mobility market. Is the market large enough to support so many competitors, and if not, what is your expectation for LEO pricing?

While Starlink looks attractive now, it faces global competition from the Chinese and Kuiper. The Chinese LEO goals are nationalistic and driven by the desire to counter Starlink. Amazon developed Kuiper for the strategic advantage of owning a constellation to serve and attract AWS customers – users who represent eighty percent of Amazon’s income. Alternatively, Starlink must survive on paid subscriptions, which ultimately places it at a disadvantage.

Given the emergence of multiple deep-pocketed competitors and the excess capacity created by the addition of multiple LEO shells, a decline in LEO capacity pricing is likely, the severity of which will depend on the markets targeted and the slope of the LEO demand curve.

As a veteran in the satellite sector, what key trends do you believe will define the industry over the next five years?

It is the way GEO and LEO interplay and whether my view will come to pass, which depends on how nimbly the LEO and GEO operators react to competitive threats, especially the GEO operators who rely on the old school satellite builder pricing. GEO satellite build costs need to fall to ensure the survival of the commercial FSS business.