Earlier this month, my friend Blaine Curcio and I had the opportunity to interview Lan Tianyi, the CEO of Ultimate Blue Nebula and SpaceKey, two Beijing-based firms focusing on space/satellite industry consulting. Having worked in the industry from within the state-owned apparatus (CAST), the startup perspective, and now as a consulting company, Tianyi is really a wealth of knowledge on Chinese space. And fortunately for us and the followers of the Dongfang Hour podcast, Tianyi accepted to discuss Chinese satcom constellations with us.
In a previous article published a year ago on China Aerospace Blog, I pointed out that there were at least 22 Chinese satellite constellation projects out there, with nearly half of them being about providing satcom services, including broadband and narrowband. As a follow-up to that reflection, during this hour-long discussion with Tianyi we debate the following questions:
- What triggered this surge of (satcom) constellation projects in China over the past 5 years?
- Is there a market inside or outside of China for so many Chinese constellations?
- Is there a space for private companies to grow in this vertical ?
- Is there a difference between narrowband and broadband?
Unfortunately, an hour is very short for such a massive topic. But hopefully there will be a follow-up episode with Tianyi on Chinese space. In the meantime, we encourage you to watch our interview (see below), and to follow Dongfang Hour hosted by Blaine and I, on our official website, on YouTube, or on your favorite podcast aggregator. I hope you enjoy the show, and thanks for watching!
