This paper discusses global commercial transponder capacity enabling satellite communications (satcom) capability across satellite service segments, the historical trends in its deployment, supply and availability, and cost. The analysis focuses on two types of geosynchronous (GEO) commercial communications satellites with respect to their payload technology: widebeam satellites and high-throughput satellites (HTS). It considers satellites active in orbit and new satellites deployed in each respective year; their estimated combined global in-orbit capacity available each year and the new capacity deployed annually; their respective estimated combined cost; and the estimated cost of in-orbit satcom capacity and new capacity, by year, differentiated by payload type. The estimated cost of capacity is defined as the cost of unit of throughput, or millions of U.S. dollars per gigabit-per-second. The paper findings discuss the trends in the global commercial satellite fleet, considering the increasing share of HTS by the number of active satellites in orbit (13 percent in 2019), by the estimated cost of such satellites (19 percent in 2019), and their estimated throughput (64 percent in 2019). The estimated average global in-orbit satcom capacity cost is decreasing: in 2013 - 2019 the widebeam capacity saw cost decreases while the high-throughput capacity cost decreased dramatically. On average, global satcom capacity cost of all types decreased 40 percent while the cost of newly deployed capacity by year decreased 85 percent in 2013 - 2019. While the historical trends discussed in this paper mainly describe CEO commercial satellites, the future satcom capacity discussion addresses low Earth orbit (LEO) and other non-geostationary (NGSO) capacity deployed or planned by the operators of new broadband constellations that may potentially increase the available commercial satcom capacity by an order of magnitude, and highlights the implications of such capacity expansion for the global satcom market, including potential for ubiquitous satellite broadband connectivity and its affordability, enabling greater data volumes and data speed over satellite, and enabling and expanding new satcom service markets.
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