Gilat Satellite Networks is hopeful and even optimistic that Airbus will see fit to adopt its Stellar Blu Solutions single-beam multi-orbit ESA for the Ku-band side of the airframer’s supplier-furnished HBCplus inflight connectivity program.
“We know that recently Airbus stopped their Ku program with Safran, and we really hope that now that the main non-Starlink vendors on Ku that are available today in the market — Intelsat and Panasonic — the fact that they’re working with Stellar Blu give us the optimism that Airbus will choose Stellar Blu’s antenna for linefit as well,” Gilat CEO Adi Sfadia said during the recent 27th Annual Needham Growth Conference.
Intelsat and Panasonic are of course using the Stellar Blu ESA hardware for their next-gen IFC retrofit programs and for Boeing linefit, as powered by Eutelsat OneWeb LEO and their own respective GEO networks. Both firms are also managed service providers on the Ku-band side of Airbus HBCplus (which was previously pursuing an ESA approach with a Safran Passenger Innovations terminal based on the Thales/Get SAT dual-beam ESA. Airbus has not yet clarified which direction it intends to take. ThinKom Solutions is also offering as an option a ThinAir Plus mix-and-match VICTS + ESA package.)
In terms of linefit, “Stellar Blu is already working with Boeing on a teaming agreement on linefit and [we] really hope to add Airbus as a customer sooner than later,” Sfadia noted.
On 7 January, Gilat completed its acquisition of Stellar Blu, providing $98 million in cash at closing. “Another $29 million is dependent on delivery of ‘number of units in agreed upon margins’ for 12 months; another $19 million is increasing the backlog or doubling the new orders within 18 months … and another $99 million is up to four strategic agreements,” Sfadia said.
He explained that, per the agreement, ‘strategic agreement’ is:
…like [achieving] linefit with Airbus, is like penetrating to the DODs, like selling the antenna to Starlink which we … know that the [US] DOD is looking for a Ku antenna that will be one antenna that will support all vendors and I think we’re highly competitive in this area because Starlink doesn’t have an antenna that supports geostationary satellites.
Our antenna can work both on LEO and GEO and with relatively small software integration can work also on Starlink, so I think we’re well positioned to capture such market share.
Stellar Blu started delivering the aero ESA hardware to operators in the fourth quarter of 2024. By 14 January 2025, Stellar Blu had delivered roughly 100 ESA units to the aviation market, Sfadia said, noting that: “Production ramp up takes time, but we see it progressing on a monthly basis. We believe that it will soon reach to a rate of around 100 units per month, which is, give or take, the full capacity of two shifts of manufacturing.”
Intelsat is already rolling out the kit to North American customers, including Air Canada which confirmed in December 2024 that it has installed the multi-orbit ESA on a cluster of CRJ900s. Panasonic, meanwhile, has secured multiple undisclosed customers, with aircraft retrofits expected to start this spring.
The Stellar Blu ESA was extensively tested on Intelsat’s CRJ700 testbed before STCs were sought for various types. Panasonic, meanwhile, is testing the kit now on a Cessna Citation. Image: Stellar Blu Solutions (now owned by Gilat)
For Gilat, inflight connectivity is one of the Israeli firm’s main growth engines. In addition to providing aero modems including to Intelsat, and the Stellar Blu multi-orbit ESA, it is providing its own LEO-focused ESA for Satcom Direct, which is now part of Gogo Business Aviation. Gilat is also involved in the ground equipment to support IFC, “what we call the baseband, which we provide to Intelsat but recently also to SES. We have the power amplifiers for a mechanical antenna. We have other auxiliary [hardware] like frequency control units and power supplies for electronically steered antenna…,” said Sfadia. It also supplies transceivers.
But though it has developed its own ESA hardware including for SD-now-Gogo, the firm sees Stellar Blu’s multi-orbit ESA as a “perfect fit” for its product portfolio. “We do have an internal antenna solution, electronically steered. But the go-to-market and the first to market with a multi-orbit solution that Stellar Blu gave us, gave us a head start,” said the Gilat CEO.
“It came with a very large backlog of more than $150 million,” he added. “[W]e expect to see any number between $120 million and $150 million [in backlog] next year. I think that there’s a lot of potential and a lot of potential for synergies between the companies.”
Together with Stellar Blu, we are going to pass $200 million in revenues in 2025 and it’s really exciting.
Interestingly, Gilat is already exploring ways to drive down costs around the Stellar Blu ESA. “Part of the avionics around the terminal is something that Gilat knows how to do, and we’ve already started to develop some of the parts that will drive costs down and increase the future margins,” said Sfadia.
Gilat sees strong opportunities for the terminal across commercial aviation, business aviation and defense. Sfadia shared how Gilat sees the civil market right now: “six or seven large service providers” with Intelsat owning “around 20-25% of the market; Panasonic owns another 20-25%. Starlink right now is not a big player but they do have a nice backlog. Viasat owns around 25%; Hughes is getting into the market; Anuvu.”
For its part, Panasonic is “really happy” with the Stellar Blu ESA, Panasonic Avionics vice president, connectivity business unit John Wade told RGN late last year.
Your author recalls that when Panasonic began to ramp up deliveries of its still-flying, prior generation gimbaled antenna, it saw fit to acquire the antenna-maker, Israeli firm Starling and bring the work in-house. And so I asked Wade if Panasonic has any interest in acquiring Gilat.
“No, we don’t,” confirmed Wade. “For one thing, Gilat is a company that operates in multiple verticals and does multiple different things. We’re an IFC or an IFE company … plus candidly, there is so much development going on in the antenna space right now, I don’t know what the antennas are going to look like in five years time. And I think with so many technologies being worked on, developed, touted as the next great antenna for aviation, we’re going to take a watch and see approach until we get some more confidence around which technology is going to be the lead technology in the future.
“Panasonic is ultimately a hardware company and so I don’t think it’s out of the question that if we saw the right opportunity with the right antenna technology that we’d certainly consider going back and building our own antenna, but I don’t see anything on the horizon that would necessitate doing that. The Stellar Blu antenna is performing extremely well and we’re very happy with it, and so for the foreseeable future, I think that’s the antenna that we’re going to be using.”
SES is a MEO/GEO managed service provider on the Ka-band side of Airbus HBCplus (though the aero ISP role will be played by its partners). SES will become a Ku-band MSP on the program when it completes its acquisition of Intelsat (as to whether or not the deal can be hastened, the FCC has asked SES for an exhaustive list of deliverables around competitive dynamics including in the IFC market.) For Ka-band HBCplus, Airbus uses a SPI terminal based on ThinKom’s Ka2517 VICTS antenna; it is currently in revenue service on an Emirates A350.
When your author interviewed SES global head of aviation Andrew Ruszkowski late last year, I asked him what he thought of the Stellar Blu ESA. He declined to comment but said: “Our sort of next generation terminal roadmap is definitely focusing on sponsoring and developing ESA or electronically steerable antennas because it’s going to be a very important feature of the multi-orbit, multi-band feature.”
On the multi-band front, he said, intriguingly: “Ultimately, the Holy Grail of this question or the answer to this question is a terminal that’s capable of operating in both bands. I think everybody recognizes that. SES certainly embraces that, but we are definitely a few years away from that being reality.”
Related Articles:
Featured image credited to Jason Rabinowitz
