Episode 21

Filling The Connectivity Gaps - Satellite LoRaWAN with Telemaco Melia

Telemaco Melia, Vice President and General Manager of EchoStar Mobile, talks about building a satellite-powered LoRaWAN network that fills in the last-mile connectivity gaps for IoT deployments across Europe and the U.S.

In this episode, Telemaco explains how satellite LoRaWAN is being used to extend coverage to remote locations where deploying gateways isn’t feasible. From cattle tracking in South America to critical infrastructure monitoring in Europe, satellite IoT is fast becoming a necessary layer in achieving 100% device reach.

We explore how EchoStar Mobile’s dual-mode approach leverages both terrestrial and satellite networks to deliver reliable, 24/7 LoRaWAN connectivity. Telemaco also shares why using licensed spectrum in the S-band allows them to guarantee packet delivery and network availability—critical for commercial deployments.

Other highlights include:

  • Why most customers already use LoRaWAN and need satellite to close connectivity gaps
  • How a smaller segment simply needs a solution, regardless of the underlying protocol
  • The technical advantage of LoRa’s LR-FHSS modulation for resilience and interference resistance
  • What makes switching between terrestrial and satellite networks seamless from the developer’s perspective
  • Why energy harvesting is a major consideration in satellite IoT deployments
  • What’s coming next: multi-network chipsets that switch between terrestrial and satellite depending on availability and application

Links:

Telemaco on LinkedIn

EchoStar Mobile

Transcript
Speaker:

Today's guest on

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MeteoScientific’s The Business of LoRaWAN

is Telemaco Melia, vice president

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and general manager of EchoStar Mobile

and a board member of the LoRa Alliance.

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Telemaco has spent the last four years

pushing the boundaries

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of satellite enabled LoRaWAN,

leading the development of EchoStar’s

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pan-European LoRaWAN IoT network

using geostationary satellites.

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Under his leadership,

EchoStar mobile has deployed real time

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bidirectional connectivity over

satellite, enabling LoRaWAN devices

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to operate in remote areas

where terrestrial networks don't reach.

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In this conversation, we cover

the business case for satellite LoRaWAN,

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how customers are using it

to close critical coverage gaps,

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and what it actually takes

to make a device work reliably in space.

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We get into resilience, latency, packet

delivery guarantees, dual mode

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hardware and why licensing

spectrum in the S-band makes a difference.

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We also touch on what's coming

expanded coverage into the U.S.,

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the future of hybrid terrestrial satellite

connectivity, and how the LoRaWAN

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ecosystem is evolving to support

truly global deployments.

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This episode is sponsored by the Helium

Foundation's IoT Working Group.

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Helium offers global LoRaWAN coverage

and is used by everyone

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from hobbyists to businesses

deploying countrywide networks.

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If you'd like to see if Helium

coverage exists near you,

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check out the links in the show notes.

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To get started using Helium today.

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You can sign up for a console account

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with MeteoScientific

at console.meteoscientific.com

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Now let's dig into the conversation

with Telemaco Melia. Welcome Telemaco.

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Thanks so much for coming on the show.

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You're welcome. Pleasure.

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I'm psyched to have you on.

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I think the big thing here

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is that watching your career,

looking back over your career,

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you've had this ability

to take really cutting edge stuff

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and then bring to market

to make sure that people got to use it.

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You've been in the business long time.

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Let's start with what are the fundamentals

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of satellite and LoRaWAN

that you're super pumped about?

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When we started trying to understand

what we could do with satellite and IoT,

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we had to figure out how to do it

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in a cost efficient and standard way.

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And when we started

almost four years to go,

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we didn't have much available

other than some cool technology like LoRa

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and chipsets available, but without

the understanding that would work or not.

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So we really tested, let's say,

okay, let's say if these things have legs.

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On paper they do.

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But you know, when you put that

in the field, you you never know.

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And we tried

and it did work out of the shot

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without really much intervention

on the chipset

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and with very reasonable budget

for the setting up of the network.

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We we got the service life.

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So I think this was pretty exciting

because several stars aligned without even

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we knew in advance,

because when the satellite was large

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back in 2017, nobody could have imagined

that these satellite

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would run this way forward for that. Okay.

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Nobody wouldimagine that these chipsets

built by some years back

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would that be an enabling satellite

connectivity of the shops?

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So there were several

things that were unexpected

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and that didn't work

properly from from day one.

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So these days I think was one

of the most exciting finding that we got.

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And that's why moving forward was easy,

because these things were well, available.

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But nobody had been engineering

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these capabilities from day

one for this specific purpose.

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Got it.

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Okay, so the surprising piece was,

was basically that it worked

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because hardware is usually pretty hard.

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Okay.

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Well let's go straight into it.

I mean, this is The Business of LoRaWAN.

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What does the ROI look like on satellite

devices when you're selling to a customer?

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Is ROI what you're focusing on?

Is it something else?

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What we do is we sell connectivity

to people like device manufacturers,

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OEM system integrators, that they do have

the notion of the application end to end.

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And they come to us

because they have a connectivity gap.

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Often what happens is

they do have to ration network

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availability, but then there are spots

where a network is not available.

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Deploying a private gateways or private

solutions would be too expensive.

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And there are no public networks.

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So satellite at that point in time

becomes the only logical way

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to efficiently address,

you know, connectivity for a population

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of the total fleet, which is not big

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but is critical to get to 100%.

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Okay.

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So that's where we we come into play,

and we don't set ourselves

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as direct competitors

to other people deploying to our network.

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We set up ourselves

as complementary solutions

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to people that already have deployed

personal networks.

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That's why

the technology that we built is dual mode.

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So it can use both the terrestial networks

as well as satellite.

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And this is where becomes very handy

because when people use

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to terrestrial connectivity

they can add satellites very easy.

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Got it.

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So your typical customer

already understands LoRaWAN.

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They've already got a fleet of devices

deployed.

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They probably have gateways out there.

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And they come to you

because they have gaps.

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You're not seeing customers

who are like, hey,

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I heard about the satellite and LoRaWAN

thing. Let's start with you.

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There are a few of them also

that are not really into the technology,

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and that is a large population.

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You know, generally

that they even don't not satellite, okay.

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So they don't know

that it would be possible to use this

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low power protocol over satellite?

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Often

the first reaction was “That cannot work.

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I don't believe you.” Okay.

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So that that we saw that

few times already.

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So yes, there are also

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personalities that have no idea

that that is existing actually.

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So is is a mix.

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But yes, the number of,

people that were already

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into the LoRaWAN ecosystem

and that been picking up,

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satellite data easily is probably today

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60-70% of the partners we're working with.

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Okay.

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And I got a couple listener

questions came in.

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One of them was with the ongoing

disruption of worldwide GPS

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due to the Ukraine war.

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How stable is the tech right now?

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They're seeing that there's

some some issues with that.

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What are you seeing?

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Semtech they built

a very interesting, modulation

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which is called the DAS frequency hopping.

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What they call LoRa FHSS,

so it's a frequency hopping solution

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that essentially splits the, you know,

available channels in smaller channels.

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And then they put bit of information

on different channels, and then the data

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is reconstructed at the very end after,

you know, a reception chain

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that has the advantage

of reducing a lot, the packet error

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rate, therefore possibility

to lose, to lose packets.

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But it is also resilient

from jamming on interference standpoint.

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Of course, if you come with a large jammer

and you jam the full band,

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everybody will be down.

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I mean, independently of the technology

that you use,

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but literally the use of the LRFHSS,

because they are using, using

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there is more channels with high energy

than these gives a lot of resilience.

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So yes, in that respect there is some

advantage in doing that type of approach.

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Got it.

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And this is the

you said LRFHSS Long Range Frequency

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Hopping Spread Spectrum

I think it is correct.

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Yeah. Okay.

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And then the other one is

what's the current coverage in service.

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Like I know I'd seen a bunch of stuff

on European coverage.

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One of the folks who wrote in

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said that they talked to

you guys a while ago,

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but there's just a short window,

maybe two hours a day,

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for their devices to connect.

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Has that changed?

I think there's a couple of years ago.

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Or is this kind of 24 hour

worldwide service?

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What does it look like

now for us for mobile,

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which is the entity in Europe managing,

the S-band spectrum,

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which is the spectrum allocated, whereas,

you know, for a mobile satellite services

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is given a geostationary satellite

means that is up in the sky,

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you know, at the equator,

always in the same position that for it

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provides 24 seven connectivity,

real time, long, bidirectional.

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Okay.

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So there is a single satellite,

but there is no waiting

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time for receiving or sending data.

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That's the same thing

that we can offering us.

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We recently, you know, got the approval

also to offer a services in the US.

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So that would be exactly the same scale

that would be able to not

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serve customers

on the other side of the ocean as well.

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It's still a geostationary satellite.

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So all we're also bidirectional

and 24 by seven.

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And is I mean

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a geostationary satellite

is is a long way away.

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So there's going to be some latency here.

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Walk me through some of the stuff

that you'll tell a customer before they

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come on just to set the expectation, like,

hey, this is not a

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a thing where you have got, you know,

you got a gateway right next to a sensor

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and there's no latency issues

other than what is inherent in LoRaWAN.

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Yeah. What should a customer expect?

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So what we tell the customer is, look,

you will be able

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to get your connection,

your data in less than a second.

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And then the only way

that we convince you is that you test it.

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And you, you see it yourself.

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So what we measure today

is that in less than a second,

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the data leaves the sensor end

is actually displayed in the dashboard.

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The satellite is 36,000km

away from the Earth.

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Usually communications that use IP

mobility, like the the bigger terminal.

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So they do have 700 milliseconds

round trip time, which is more or less

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the same latency that you would expect

from an edge GPRS connection.

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Sure. So you know,

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the packet flies, get on the other side.

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It is treated demodulated

and then displayed

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all in less than a second,

which you know for real time communication

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like critical infrastructure

these type of applications,

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it is, you know

well in what people would expect to see.

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Yeah here within a second is pretty good.

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And how reliable is that?

I mean, it is traveling a long distance.

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There's a bunch of stuff in the way.

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There might be some solar disruption

stuff, like what are we looking at with

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satellite versus

terrestrial reliability of of service.

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Don't forget that you are using licensed

spectrum in the S band.

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Therefore we can guarantee

availability of the network.

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There is no interference

coming from out of band interference.

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And then also we manage interference

within the band.

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So the packet error rate is very low.

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Therefore we can guarantee a high level

of QoS, always a best effort network.

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But we can guarantee

we do have strategies to guarantee,

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you know, how interesting and then what

parts of the world aren't covered.

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It sounds like you got the US and Europe.

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So imagine

you got the Atlantic between them as well.

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What parts of a customer comes to

and says, hey, I've got a device here

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where you say, like,

hey, we're just not there yet.

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Well, interestingly enough, we

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we got a request for similar services

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in South America, Africa, Middle

East and South Asia.

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We constantly got request.

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Unfortunately,

we don't have coverage there yet.

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We're working on that one.

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As you remember in my talk

during the IoT World Solution Congress.

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You know, my point

was that today, having, a single provider

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giving you connectivity worldwide

is the hard task,

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that for at this point in time only,

you know,

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partnership would be able to provide

right that that cover.

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But it's also true

that if you look at region one,

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which is Europe, region two, which is us,

today you are probably talking about 50%

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of the overall market, which is already

a big part of the of the cake,

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obviously, being able to cover,

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you know, regions like South America

will even give you an extended reach

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because there are a lot of use cases,

like cattle

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tracking that, you know, represent

a lot of a lot of revenues

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because they need to trace the animals

from the birth, when they need to be

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sold on the market for their meat,

and that if you don't track the, you know,

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the animals there,

you cannot go to the high value market.

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So there are places

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where having this type of connectivity

would be a real game changer.

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It will get there just a matter of time.

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Got it.

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And what does it look like to throw

another satellite up

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is that that's a couple million bucks.

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It's I mean, I don't think it's no longer

like 90 million,

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but it's it's probably not,

you know, 10,000.

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Well, these these, you know, these

these figures highly depends on how

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big is the satellite, how many satellites

are launching with the larger AIS

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and in any case, are confidential data.

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But, yeah, I mean, launching a satellite,

several millions of dollars

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and then building satellites is a depends

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if you're building small size

satellites or larger satellites.

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So you're talking anyway to businesses

there to make constellations.

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You are in the multi billion dollars.

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Yeah.

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So...

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it’s a very expensive business to be on.

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And that's why today

you see obviously Starlink, which is,

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you know, a great advantage

compared to competition.

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Amazon is coming on board Eutelsat.

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OneWeb is there.

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But you know, it's

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not every day that somebody wakes up

and say, hey, I have a budget.

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Let's launch a new constellation.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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We're not slinging them off the roof

quite yet.

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You see a lot of, you know, startups

launching a few satellites,

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one, two, three, ten satellites and doing,

you know,

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there is a lot of,

R&D of government funded projects.

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But to make these a real business

you need more than that..

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So then the next piece is

how easy is it to switch between networks

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as we've got this satellite piece

this has been that's licensed

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and you've got the kind of regular

LoRaWAN.

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It's unlicensed.

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Is that a a really difficult thing?

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Is there a ton of stuff

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that a new customer coming on

board has to do,

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or is that something that you guys handle

internally?

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Walk me through the process.

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So the the goal for us was to make it easy

to, you know, to get adopted.

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So today we are able to hide

both the fact that you are

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using LoRa technology and the fact you're

using satellite, potentially the device

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maker only knows the AT commands

to code the application in the device.

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And then the MQTT JSON format

to get the data out of the platform.

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Okay.

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That's all somebody needs to know

to actually get going there.

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Now there is more around integration

of device, availability of the antennas,

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positioning of the device, how the device

is used in the real life use case.

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That's why we put a lot of emphasis

on letting people test,

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because it's not granted that the device

will work in the live environment.

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Okay, so

but this unfortunately is not only us,

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it’s the price that you need to pay

to get to your satellite.

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Okay.

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So fortunately there are more

and more people

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building

antennas that, suitable for the IoT.

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So you don't need a big dish antenna,

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you just need the much more compact

antennas that are not so expensive.

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But still, the radio propagation,

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you know, is how the device is built,

what we place, the antenna work.

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How is the enclosure done?

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What is the playing ground

for your standard?

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The mechanical design, battery,

solar panels, all of that plays a role.

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But this is true for any any device maker.

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So these are the complexities

that we see today.

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And having skilled people helping you

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manufacture device manufacturing

in that respect is very useful.

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But this is where you have the power

of the LoRaWAN ecosystem, because you have

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a very active and energized ecosystem

where there are lot of people building,

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devices

with many different technologies like,

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solar panels, batteries, enclosures.

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All of that is is very handy

when you have an ecosystem

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that is, producing a lot of and so etc..

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Yeah, yeah, it is cool that every new

trade show has got some new stuff,

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whether it's indoor energy harvesting,

which is probably not as applicable

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to satellite devices,

or it's just offering a new ability there

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when you are outdoor energy

and harvesting becomes important because

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then you may reduce the need of a battery

and that means longer lifetime.

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So yes, no, energy investing is definitely

one of the of the big assets here.

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I know there are people that want to make

energy harvesting finally portable.

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Meaning do you transmit

based on the energy that you have?

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Satellite is a bit more complex

environment, but definitely it will.

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That is very interesting because

the satellite device is always outdoors.

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Got it?

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You need to be in the sun.

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You got to match the

the solution to the problem.

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Okay.

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I think we'll wrap up here with

is there anything that you're looking down

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the pipe in the next year or two

that you're really excited about?

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That may not have hit the market yet, but,

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that's that's coming

and you can see it pretty clearly today.

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We we do have satellite IoT services,

you know, small sensors

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that do, do transmit data

every now and then.

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That is there are a lot of activities

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going on on

anything that is non terrestrial networks,

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like it's the DGP working on connecting

smartphones, satellites,

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whether this is useful yet

it has to be proven especially, you know,

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in the context where things are changing

and you are in a transition period.

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But clearly in the long run,

having, a single modem or chipset

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that can do terrestrial and satellite

can switch between the networks,

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depending on availability,

application and service.

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Is that is, a dream coming true.

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And this is where we will see

a lot of changes, a lot of

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new activities,

because then the carousel operators,

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we need to cooperate

with the satellite operators.

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And then,

this will create a lot of new dynamics

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that today don't simply don't exist,

even even as as users,

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we have to give you the opportunity

to talk,

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to use the device in a way that

probably today we're not even imagining.

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That's why I'm really curious to,

you know, to understand

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where the market is going,

because there are a lot of,

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projections and, yeah,

you know, so many people's connections.

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But at the end of the day, you need

to understand how really people are using.

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And today, no, I think nobody really knows

how things will evolve.

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That's where it becomes

interesting. Right?

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Yeah.

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I love that you're pushing into the,

into the unknown there

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and figuring out what's going on

with the cutting edge technology.

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It's a nice, nice way to wrap this up.

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Telemaco, thanks so much for making the

time to come on. I know you're super busy.

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I appreciate you sharing a little bit

about satellite LoRaWAN with us.

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You're welcome.

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And,

do visit echostarmobile.com to learn more.

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Right on.

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That's it for

this episode of The Business of LoRaWAN.

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I built this for you.

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So whether you're a business owner,

a LoRaWAN professional, or a hobbyist,

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the intent is to give you great LoRaWAN

information.

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Of course,

the best information doesn't come from me.

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It comes from the conversations

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we have with the people building

and deploying this tech in the real world.

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And that's where you come in.

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LoRaWAN is a global

patchwork of talent and ideas.

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And ironically,

for a globally connected network,

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most of the brilliant folks

working on it are connected yet.

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Help me change that.

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Introduce me

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to someone awesome in your network,

someone doing meaningful work and LoRaWAN.

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Or just shoot me a name.

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I'll take it from there

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and get them on the show

so we can share their work with the world.

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You can always find me at MetSci.show

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That's M-E-T-S-C-I dot

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S-H-O-W, metsci.show.

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If your company serves

the LoRaWAN community

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:

and you want to reach this dedicated

audience, let's talk.

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If you want to try LoRaWAN for yourself.

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:

Create a MeteoScientific account

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:

at console.meteoscientific.com

and get your first 400 DC for free,

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:

which is enough to run a device

sending hourly for about a year.

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This show is supported

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:

by a grant from the Helium Foundation

and produced by Gristle King, Inc..

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I'm Nik Hawks.

I'll see you on the next show.

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About the Podcast

Show artwork for The Business of LoRaWAN
The Business of LoRaWAN
Learn From the Pros

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About your host

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Nik Hawks

Incurably curious, to stormy nights and the wine-dark sea!