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    HomeSatelliteFledgling satellite WAVE consortium expands board

    Fledgling satellite WAVE consortium expands board

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    ST Engineering iDirect exec joins fellow board members from AWS, Comtech, Intelsat, Microsoft, Reticulate Micro and SES

    Ivan de Baere, Vice President of Intuition Architecture at ST Engineering iDirect will sit on the board of Waveform Architecture for Virtualized Ecosystems (WAVE) Consortium. ST Engineering iDirect is a satellite communications firm.

    The WAVE Consortium was set up in March 2024. According to the website, the consortium’s mission “is to transform the SATCOM industry towards a fully interoperable ecosystem by using intelligent, open, and virtualized networks and providing standardized architectures and specifications”.

    Which is a long winded way of saying its among other things, its stretching every sinew to align with telecoms. With this in mind, ST Engineering iDirect recently announced Intuition. This is a virtualised, cloud-native, standards-based ground system intended to foster an open, interoperable ecosystem and help the satellite communications sector “overcome traditional growth constraints”.

    An aim close to the heart of every telco too.

    Other board members include representatives from AWS, Comtech, Intelsat, Microsoft, Reticulate Micro and SES.

    The only other members of the consortium it seems, so far, are the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Chief Information Officer for the US Department of Defense and The Space Crowd. The latter, also from the US, is a “nonprofit research and advocacy group for the advancement of space and national defense.

    As yet, no working groups have been announced.

    ST Engineering iDirect states that de Baere is a good fit for the consortium, as he’s “been key in driving standards-based approaches since his work with the DVB-standards [digital video broadcasting] body”.

    Sridhar Kuppanna, SVP Engineering, ST Engineering iDirect. “In our new role as a board member of the WAVE Consortium…it’s our ambition to bring this ongoing, shared vision to life, revolutionizing satellite communications to enable our customers to interoperate seamlessly, deploy effortlessly, orchestrate efficiently and scale rapidly for the future.”