The World Teleport Association (WTA) has published its annual “Inside the Top Operators”research report. The latest report draws from data submitted to the WTA by teleport operating companies around the world for the association's annual Top Operator rankings of global, independent and fast-growing companies in this sector of the hybrid satellite-fiber communications industry.
Heading the Top Twenty lists of operators in 2006 were:
- No. 1 Global Teleport Operator — Intelsat
- No. 1 Independent Teleport Operator — GlobeCast
- No. 1 Fastest-Growing Teleport Operator — Skyport International
The Top Operator rankings are based on annual revenue reported by companies for the two most recent fiscal years.
One trend documented by the report was increasing price volatility. Satellite transponder pricing has generally moved up during the past twelve months, but some 40 percent of respondents still reported price declines for satellite capacity. Fiber and microwave pricing, which has seen steep declines since the telecom bust, has stopped dropping in price, according to 80 percent of respondents.
The services offered by teleport operators also followed different pricing paths, with basic teleport services (uplinking, downlinking, modulation/demodulation, encryption, standards conversion, switching and routing) appearing to hold their price better than value-added services. This unexpected result reverses a trend identified in last year's report.
IP and data services are challenging video for first place in the service mix. After uplinking/downlinking, the services offered by the largest number of operators were IP services and enterprise data services, with video services ranking fourth. In terms of actual revenue, video continues to be the single biggest source of business, with 80 percent of respondents reporting that they generated at least a quarter of their revenues from it. IP and enterprise data services ranked second.
For more information, visit www.worldteleport.org.
