Vanguard Magazine

GAME CHanGER 38 DECEMBER 2019/JANUARY 2020 www.vanguardcanada.com See the full interview online Q What is your role at the organization today? As President & CEO, my role is to make sure our organization delivers on prom- ises and continues to make a difference. Q What was your most challenging moment? Internet via satellite is our primary busi- ness, and when one of our satellites had an anomaly in space, it was extremely tense for several hours. Our customers depend on our service being reliable for business-critical applications, so when something like this happens, you feel helpless because there is nothing you can do. This satellite is 40,000 kilome- ters above the equator – so not very easy to stop by and repair. Thankfully, the incredible engineers at Telesat Canada solved the problem, and our custom- ers were back online within a few hours. The lesson learned was to strive for di- versity in our supply chain and, whenev- er possible, always suggest redundancy. Q What is the one thing that has you most fired up today? My very first meeting in the morning is with our technical support team, and when they tell me that our networks are running to perfection and all customers are happy, I'm fired up in a good way. But if we have an unresolved customer support ticket, it's the opposite. When you know that your customers rely on your service, making sure it works as promised is the most important job at hand. Q What people or organizations do you believe best embody the innova- tion mindset? I'm a fan of Brent Perrott of Hunter Communications. Brent and his team saw an opportunity to deliver excep- tionally strong satellite coverage for the Canadian market, and the result is a ser- vice that can deliver 50Mbps on a 65cm antenna north of 70 degrees! But I also need to mention Elon Musk of SpaceX and Tesla. He has changed the satellite launch business in a very positive way through innovation. Q How has innovation become engrained in your organizations culture and how is it being optimized? Repetition. As said earlier, the culture at Galaxy is customer-focused, and the goal is to find the best solution possible for our customers' needs – and some- times that means finding a better way. As CEO, if I "have we created the best ser- vice for this customer's need" enough, it will become second nature. Q What technologies, business models, and trends will drive the big- gest changes in your industry over the next two years? Low earth orbit satellites (LEO) and the ground technology required to track these satellites offer a transformational evolution for our industry. The knock against using satellite has always been the latency, which is the time it takes data to travel 40,000 kilometers in space and re- turn. LEOs will orbit a lot closer at 500 – 1,200 kilometers up in space, which makes applications work much faster and perform like a fiber connection. It is our hope that the business models will also be transformational. We expect to see new flat-panel antennas that can electronically track the satellites movement and auto- peak the signals. With the combination of high-performing low-latency links and simple cost-effective user terminals, the LEOs will quickly become an important service for Galaxy to offer. Traditional geostationary satellites will continue to play a key role in remote communica- tions. The trend to cloud services and other applications will need a focus on the quality of experience in addition to qual- ity of service. Best-effort networks may work for recreational surfing, but quality of experience networks will deliver the performance that demanding applications will need. Q What is your parting piece of advice? If you need communications for your remote location, do your homework. In- ternet access is not like a utility: it's not like a water service – one size does not fit all. One satellite Internet service may be designed for consumer use, another for critical military applications. And service providers often vary in their focus and capability. With the Internet and Google, any smart question can find a smart an- swer. The challenge is to get the question right. My advice to your readers is to iden- tify your requirements – the communica- tion need and the support model that are most important to your remote site – and then shop around for the solution. Rick Hodgkinson Founder, President & Ceo Galaxy BroadBand CommuniCations inC.

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