On Episode 54 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast, we spoke with Jaume Sanpera, the CEO and Co-Founder of Sateliot, about how he’s bringing his vision of global  IoT connectivity to life. With 30 years of experience, Juame is an entrepreneurial leader in the telecommunications industry. He’s founded several companies, including the first telecom satellite operator in Europe, giving him some fascinating insights into the space. Read on to find out more about how he and the rest of the Sateliot team are transforming the satellite industry. 

“When we started saying that the same device could be used in satellites and telecommunications, almost everybody looked at it in a very sceptical way. When they first did the first demonstration, everything started changing. We got a huge amount of help from the chip manufacturers when we told them that the chip that they were selling to 20% of the world could be sold to the other 80% as well. That’s when everything changed. 

Next, I had to go in and convince some of the brightest minds in the telecommunication sector that this was good for them, and that the fusion of the telecommunications and satellite sectors was a positive thing. The rest was easy because it’s just technicalities. 

We launched our first satellite in 2021. We made some contributions to the standard wake-up procedure of the devices. You don’t have continuous coverage with just one satellite, so the device has to know when the satellite is in the right place and wake up at the right moment. We had to calculate the orbit to know when the satellite was ready, which we figured out following the launch of that first satellite. 

Everything has been a bet. We bet that the standard wasn’t going to change until 2022, and things were a little bit up in the air because you have to have time to develop your technology. We had limited time to change the standard. We had to push hard in order to get approval for our devices, but we succeeded, and the reward is that we are the first ones that have a satellite that works in this way. It’s a base station on a satellite that connects directly with a 5G IoT device.”

To find out more about Sateliot’s developments in the 5G space, tune into Episode 54 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast here. 

We sit down regularly with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.