From Vision to Reality: How MWC Showed the Industry Moving from Satellite Talk to Satellite Business
*Blog by Denis Sutherland, VP – Business Development for Satellite and NTN, Mavenir
Every year at MWC Barcelona we hear about the next big shift in telecoms. Sometimes those shifts take years to materialize. But walking the halls this year, it felt like something had clearly crossed the line from concept to commercial reality.
For those of us working in non‑terrestrial networks (NTN), the conversations this year were noticeably different. Last year much of the discussion was still about possibility — trials, demonstrations and proof‑of‑concepts. This year the tone changed. The industry is now talking about live services, real customers, and how to monetize them.
From Trials to Live Services
One of the clearest signals of this transition is the growing number of commercial deployments that combine satellite and cellular infrastructure.
One example is Terrestar’s nationwide hybrid satellite IoT service in Canada powered by Mavenir’s cloud‑native virtualized RAN and core. Rather than a laboratory experiment, this is a live service delivering connectivity across an entire country.
Read the announcement: https://www.mavenir.com/press-releases/terrestar-launches-canada-wide-hybrid-satellite-iot-service-powered-by-mavenirs-cloud-native-virtualized-ran-and-core/
Hybrid satellite‑terrestrial architectures like this are becoming increasingly important as operators look to extend coverage into areas where traditional infrastructure is difficult or uneconomic to deploy.
Satellite is no longer just about emergency connectivity or niche use cases. It is becoming part of the mainstream operator toolkit.
The Satellite Partnership Wave
Another theme that came through strongly at MWC was the scale of industry alignment around NTN. At the GSMA Satellite & NTN Summit, a statistic stood out: 118 mobile network operators now have a declared satellite partner.
This tells an important story. Only a few years ago satellite and mobile networks were largely separate ecosystems. Today they are becoming increasingly interdependent.
Operators are forming partnerships with LEO and GEO providers not simply to experiment with coverage, but to build new services and revenue streams.
Watch the GSMA NTN Summit discussion: https://www.gsmaintelligence.com/videos/satellite-and-ntn-summit-at-mwc26
AI: The Other Big Conversation
It wouldn’t be MWC without a major technology theme shaping every discussion. This year that theme was unmistakably AI. It appeared in almost every session, booth discussion, and strategy conversation across the show floor.
One particularly interesting angle was the intersection of AI and NTN. During a panel discussion with Timothy Last of Iridium, Willie Stegmann of TM Forum and Sachin Karkala of Mavenir, the discussion explored how AI and NTN together can unlock entirely new revenue streams for satellite and telecom operators.
Watch the panel discussion on Mobile World Live: https://www.mobileworldlive.com/mavenir-panel-discussion-beyond-coverage-how-ai-and-ntn-unlock-new-telco-business-models/
The Importance of Cloud-Native Architecture
Hybrid networks that combine terrestrial RAN, satellite links and distributed core architectures require flexibility that traditional telecom infrastructure was never designed to support.
Cloud‑native platforms allow operators to integrate satellite connectivity directly into their mobile cores, deploy services dynamically across edge and cloud environments, and scale services rapidly as demand grows.
A good discussion of this approach is covered in this Mobile World Live partner interview: https://www.mobileworldlive.com/partner-interview-mavenir-4-5/
The Real Shift: Business Models
Stepping back from the technology discussions, the biggest shift at MWC was the focus on business models. The question is no longer whether satellite should integrate with cellular networks. The real question now is how operators monetize satellite‑enabled connectivity.
Some opportunities include IoT coverage expansion, direct‑to‑device services, enterprise connectivity, resilience and backup connectivity, and remote industry coverage.
When you combine global satellite reach with AI‑driven service intelligence and cloud‑native networks, you begin to see opportunities that simply did not exist before.
Looking Ahead
MWC has always been a good barometer for where the telecom industry is heading. This year’s signal was clear: satellite is becoming an integrated part of the telecom ecosystem. Partnerships are forming, platforms are maturing, and commercial services are launching.
The next phase will be scaling these services and unlocking new revenue streams for operators worldwide.
Join Mavenir at SATShow Week 2026 in Washington D.C.
I’ll be continuing this conversation next week at the SATShow Week 2026 conference in Washington, D.C. On Wednesday 25th March, I’ll be presenting on the role of AI in Satellite NTN services, exploring how intelligent network automation, service optimization, and new AI‑driven business models are reshaping the future of space‑based connectivity. In my talk “Beyond Convergence: The next Frontier of IoT & Mobile Communication” I will be discussing how the momentum we saw in Barcelona is now translating into real‑world deployments and commercial scale. If you’re attending the show, I’d welcome the opportunity to connect and continue the discussion.
Let’s Continue the Conversation
To schedule a meeting with the Mavenir team during SATShow Week 2026 in Washington, D.C., please contact us at events@mavenir.com.
