The realities of non-terrestrial networks increasingly show that coverage depends as much on timing as location
The telecom industry has so long built network optimization strategies around a static infrastructure serving a mobile user base. Now as non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) enter early deployment, driven by Starlink and other players in the space, and are set to become part of the broader mobile network operations, that approach is becoming redundant.
“When we compare NTN with traditional telecom operations, there is one fundamental shift. In traditional telecom, the base station or antenna is static while the users are mobile. In NTN, that model changes: the users are relatively static in a given area, but the antennas [satellites] are moving,” said Anshul Bhatt, chief product officer of the OSS (Operations Support Systems) business unit at Rakuten Symphony, a subsidiary of Japan’s Rakuten Group that sells OSS/BSS and automation solutions.
The inversion introduces a fourth element to the existing three dimensions of longitude, latitude, and altitude: time. Satellites move at kilometers per second, and depending on their pass windows, the coverage and capacity change. NTN cells can appear and disappear over a certain geography in matters of minutes, leading to real-time variabilities in coverage.
Similarly, locations served by smaller or older satellites have different coverage and quality of connection than those on the path of bigger and newer ones. This makes coverage and latency of NTNs highly dynamic and time-dependent.
Bhatt noted that incident priority too becomes conditional because of the constant movement. For example, in a static terrestrial network, a cell site outage requires urgent restoration, whereas in the case of NTNs, the priority shifts depending on the satellite schedule.
“If no satellite is passing through, an outage is less urgent. Conversely, if a satellite is due to pass in a few minutes, restoration becomes critical,” Bhatt said.
Another important aspect is provisioning. A satellite passes over multiple countries during the course of a day, and that requires geological cell provisioning that is adaptive to its schedules, and changing situations.
“For example, if there is a hurricane in a specific region of the U.S., you may need to configure the satellite on-demand to provide emergency services for an operator like AT&T. Provisioning must be dynamic, and adapt to satellite schedules,” he said.
The operational burden of NTNs is also much greater. “In traditional telecom, you have ‘peak hours’. In NTN, it is peak hour somewhere in the world at all times. Operation centers must store data locally while remaining accessible to providers,” he said.
“Furthermore, one NTN provider will receive requests from multiple MNOs [Mobile Network Operators] —like Rakuten in Japan, Reliance Jio in India, or AT&T in the U.S. — all wanting to configure coverage on the same satellite. The NTN operator must integrate with the ticketing and configuration systems of all these different MNOs.”
Bhatt also talked about data sovereignty complications that come with bypassing terrestrial borders. “For an NTN operator providing global service, data integrity, and localization are major issues. If you serve an European telco, you cannot take that data out of Europe, even if the satellite passes over the whole world.”
Without temporal awareness, none of these variabilities can be fully monitored or controlled. “You can’t just think of an NTN operator as a simple extension of your RAN [radio access network]; it’s more like a complex roaming partner. We are proposing changes to standardization bodies, like ETOM [Enhanced Telecom Operations Map] and ITIL [Information Technology Infrastructure Library] to reflect these NTN requirements. It’s a ‘people, process, and product’ equation that we need to get right,” Bhatt argued.
Rakuten Symphony’s solution
Rakuten Symphony has developed what it calls the industry’s first NTN-specific OSS system to tackle some of these issues. The solution comes with dynamic topology awareness, real-time intelligence, and automated provisioning for improved monitoring and assurance of NTN networks. It includes a satellite-specific dashboard view that integrates with global databases, like the TLE (Two-Line Element) and SATCOM, to correlate satellite paths with terrestrial network services.
“This is the first time an OSS stack is being redesigned specifically for NTN,” Bhatt said. “We were able to do this because Rakuten Mobile required it, and our platform architecture was flexible enough to adapt its data model and inventory schema.”
Measuring real customer experience is just as important to assure NTN networks, and for that, Rakuten Symphony is using solar-powered probe boxes to keep the standards handsets working around the clock in remote locations where power supply is often inconsistent.
The company currently has its architecture deployed in eight regions globally to adapt to regional regulatory requirements, Bhatt said.
The solution is deployed in-house at Rakuten Mobile, while the company is also working with operators and satellite providers in the geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) and low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite space, Bhatt said.
