GEO, MEO, D2D and NTN: The Multi-Orbit Future of Satellite Communications

It would be too simplistic to read this week as a LEO-only story.

GEO and MEO may not have dominated the headlines in standalone fashion, but they remained present in some of the most strategically important developments. They were visible in Telesat’s financial structure, in defense-oriented architecture thinking, and in the Gilat-AWS-SES Space & Defense virtualization demonstration.

That reflects a broader market reality: satcom is moving toward multi-orbit pragmatism.

This article is part of the Satellite Radio Integration guide on the Yesway site.

Telesat’s results showed that GEO still matters materially, even as utilization and forward revenue guidance suggest its role is changing. GEO is becoming more focused, more selective, and more strategically applied in the use cases where its characteristics still offer strong value. That does not mean GEO is disappearing. It means GEO is being repositioned.

MEO also remains relevant, particularly in layered government and defense architectures where resilience, flexibility, and service composition matter. SES Space & Defense’s participation in the virtualized gateway modem demonstration is a reminder that MEO and GEO assets still have important value when paired with modern software-defined ground systems.

This is why the old “legacy versus future” framing is no longer especially useful. Customers do not buy orbital ideology. They buy outcomes. They want the right mix of latency, coverage, resilience, interoperability, and cost. In many cases, that points to a multi-orbit answer rather than a single-orbit one.

The same logic applies to D2D and NTN. There was no giant consumer-facing direct-to-device announcement this week, but that does not mean progress stalled. The meaningful movement took place lower in the stack: standards alignment, infrastructure readiness, and route-to-market development.

ST Engineering iDirect’s 3GPP NTN work is important in this context because it supports a more standardized relationship between satellite connectivity and terrestrial mobile frameworks. That makes adoption easier for operators, devices, and service platforms.

The Amazon-Globalsat reseller agreement also fits into the broader NTN story. Although not a narrow D2D announcement, it shows how next-generation non-terrestrial services are likely to gain traction: through partnerships that combine large-scale infrastructure with regional market knowledge, trusted commercial relationships, and practical deployment capability.

That is how communications ecosystems usually mature. First the technical layer develops. Then standards alignment improves. Then commercial channels form. Then adoption becomes easier because the service becomes less unusual to procure and less difficult to integrate.

This is also why several mid-tier and ground-segment players had such a strategically strong week. Firms like ST Engineering iDirect and Gilat are positioning themselves in the enabling layers of the market rather than relying on headline visibility alone. Over time, that can become a very powerful place to be.

The bigger lesson is straightforward. The future of satellite communications is likely to be multi-orbit, standards-aware, software-defined, and increasingly shaped by the firms that make the whole system easier to use.

Related analysis

• Satcom This Week: From Space Spectacle to Communications Reality
• Telesat Lightspeed and the Defence Pivot: Where LEO Becomes Bankable
• The Ground Segment Revolution: Orchestration, NTN Standards, and Cloud-Native Satcom

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