A conversation with Alessandro Caranci, Head of Satellite Communications at Telespazio
(An interview by Christian Cinetto)
“Telespazio was the first satellite service provider in the world, we began our activity in 1961, when satellites were not yet in orbit. Italy prepared to participate in the race to space, and a group of engineers founded what is today the Fucino Space Center. It is currently the largest space center in the world for civilian use.”
Telespazio’s headquarters in Rome is just as one would imagine it. Very thorough security, the first of many rocket models right at the entrance, and then labyrinthine corridors where the guest, if abandoned, might find themselves becoming the new Frank Dixon from The Terminal. Every now and then, an open door appears with open spaces that resemble those of NASA: monitors, monitors, and more monitors. And obviously engineers, physicists, mathematicians, and who knows what other expertise is contained in a place that hosts hundreds of professionals dealing with cutting-edge technologies. Space, along with the ocean depths, is the frontier of our knowledge.
The quote belongs to engineer Alessandro Caranci, Senior Vice President of Satellite Communications at Telespazio, with whom I had the pleasure of conversing.
Let’s start from the beginning: who is Alessandro Caranci and how did you come to Telespazio?
Professionally, I am an engineer. At the beginning of my career, I dealt with cables, then I started working for Telespazio in 2004. At some point, I went to work at Eutelsat and then returned to Telespazio, where I have happily been for more than 10 years. Today, I lead the satellite communication part of this group, which is extremely relevant in the space world.
Your educational background is interesting: classical high school and then engineering, with a significant sporting interlude.
Yes, in my adolescent years, rugby was the primary objective. Then one had to graduate, so I tried to achieve that, which I managed to do. My passion in my youth was definitely rugby. (Editor’s note: Caranci played in Serie A and can boast, among other things, some appearances in the Italian national team).
How do you reconcile this humanistic and sporting education with such a technological sector? Rugby is strongly connected to the field, to the earth, and you deal with space.
I believe that societies function when they are made up of different people. Within my company, I am not overly fascinated by technology. And this allows me to better understand users, customers, because when you provide a service, not everyone wants to understand how it works, they want it to work. My not complete interest in the technological aspect has increased attention to customer satisfaction, a founding element of a functioning society. Today, with low-orbit systems, there is much more talk about satellites. Before, I had to explain what satellite communications were, like when I played rugby and people asked me if it was the sport with the armor. Nowadays, everyone knows rugby and everyone knows what satellites are. Satellite technologies offer performances increasingly closer to the mass market, but they remain fundamental for those who need secure and reliable communications wherever they are. We focus on specific market segments where our experience allows us to guarantee a quality service.
Without mentioning specific names, what types of clients do you serve and with which services?
Our clients are those who have a high cost if communications don’t work: the government and military world and, in the civilian world, energy, mobility, the commercial maritime world. From a theoretical point of view, today we can guarantee connectivity anywhere. Our value lies in orchestrating multiple solutions that work even when one component fails. For clients who cannot afford to lose the signal, we combine different technologies, optimizing costs, security, latency, and availability to offer the only element that really matters: the quality perceived by the customer. Today we are trying to enter the advanced air mobility sector: self-piloted drones, vertical takeoff aircraft, helicopters with or without pilots. So we imagine a civilization where at some point packages will arrive with a drone, blood is brought to hospitals through helicopters, and maybe instead of leaving the house, we go up to the terrace, take our vertical takeoff plane, and move somewhere else. Now, many things that seemed like science fiction then become science and finally become normal things. What definitely connects all these objects is that they will have to be connected through a communication system. And it’s not certain that terrestrial communications will always be able to reach these objects or that they will always be available, because one of the characteristics of satellite technology is that it can be provided anywhere and can therefore be that umbrella of guarantee that allows an object to always find a way to communicate with the rest of the world. For us, this is a segment with great prospects.
At the beginning, you mentioned Fucino, a symbol of Italian space history. What does it represent today?
Fucino is a success story. Today it hosts extremely important control centers, such as that of the Galileo constellation, the European satellite navigation system at the forefront in the world. Fucino is a critical national infrastructure and in perspective, it will also be the center that will host one of the control centers of the IRIS² constellation, the new constellation of the European community to manage sovereign communications, a system that will allow Europeans to communicate securely with objects, systems, players, within the European community itself.
The presence of new players in low orbit, like Starlink, has changed the market. How have you adapted?
We try to use everything that is available. With Starlink, we have a distribution agreement. Starlink has positive characteristics: reduced latency, because they are satellites at 500 km orbit compared to 36.000 km of geostationary orbits, and a competitive cost per bit.
I like to describe what we do as if we were a restaurant. A new ingredient has arrived, truffle, and we put it in our dishes, perhaps alongside a geostationary part or a terrestrial network. Our job is to combine multiple components to provide the best possible service. Starlink has conquered 4,5 million users thanks to reduced latency and competitive cost. The market will soon see other players like OneWeb and Amazon’s Kuiper, and for us, more ingredients mean better dishes. Our value is combining ingredients knowing customer tastes, like true “meta-operators”: operators who don’t own the satellites.
Is there a risk that this sudden popularity will cause some of your clients to turn directly to these new, more economical solutions?
There is a risk of “commoditization” of connectivity. That’s why we have focused on those clients who are not looking for a commodity. While a hardware store can buy a Starlink, those who need constant connectivity, perhaps paying huge penalties in case of service disruption, continue to prefer a company with 60 years of experience. In some cases, lives can be lost, because sometimes our communications support important missions. Here we breathe the culture of service. We come from the television world, a world of effectiveness: you turned on the TV and it worked. And if it didn’t work, it was your television that wasn’t working, but the signal always arrived. We still deal with it now, providing the service to Rai, Sky, Mediaset, and others.
You are also working on interplanetary communication, like the Moonlight project for the Moon.
Moonlight is a program of the European community and ESA that sees Telespazio as the leader and provides for a telecommunication and positioning system on the Moon. It’s a fascinating topic, which requires being visionary but also concrete. Telespazio has always had this way of being: it brought television to Italy when there wasn’t any, it made the first point-to-point connections between the United States and Europe.
In the future, in the next 10-20 years, is it possible that all our communications will occur only thanks to satellites?
It’s wrong to think that the solution is not in a mix of technologies. There will always be a coexistence between fiber, mobile communication, and satellite communications. If we take Italy as an example, everyone would like to be connected. But how to achieve this universal connectivity? Analyzing population density, we see that fiber has different costs per user: bringing it to a building with 50 families is efficient, while in an isolated villa the same investment would serve only one customer. For this reason, connectivity architectures should be based on different and complementary technologies. In the future, fiber, mobile networks, and satellite communications will coexist. Satellite communications are drastically reducing their cost per bit, becoming increasingly competitive. At the same time, constellations for Direct to Device are emerging, which will allow normal mobile phones to connect directly to satellites. The user won’t know if they are connected via satellite or terrestrial network: they will simply have their service. This will lead to a unified management system that will direct devices to terrestrial or satellite cells in a “seamless” way. There are still steps to be taken, but the industry is moving in this direction faster than we could have imagined.
How do you see the evolution of satellite technologies in the coming years?
Technologies are evolving rapidly. Increasingly higher frequencies are being used, and optical type links are being developed. We are working on two fronts: optical communications and quantum keys for security protection. There are aspects that need to mature and costs that need to be reduced, but they will be very important elements of innovation.
Is there an anecdote that has stuck with you in these years of work?
I remember an initiative from many years ago. We provided connection to a family who, due to a rare disease of their son, was obliged to live at sea. This boy lived on a sailboat and followed lessons through distance learning systems that we provided. The satellite is the most democratic element that exists. In the field of development cooperation, in Iraq we provided a series of hospitals with the possibility of having a second opinion from Italy, necessary for the screening of a series of diseases.
Telespazio is an Italian company of very high technology. Are you confident that it can continue to prosper in an increasingly competitive global market?
I absolutely believe so. In Italy, there is a high interest in space, it’s a tradition we are proud of, and at this moment, a lot is being invested. I am definitely optimistic. The Italian space industry is recognized as an element of excellence at a global level: the accounts are good, and more and more people are working in this sector, not only in Telespazio but also in other companies. Italy has its place that it must maintain. Certainly, other countries may have more funds or develop different technologies, but we will continue to have our say with the Italian style of approach to space. And we are not just Italians: we have the fortune of being a transnational group with different cultures. Here you can talk with Germans, Brazilians, French. Exchanges are frequent and allow us to understand that we can be an excellence precisely because we are different, with unique perspectives. Everyone has their culture, and if we manage to enhance the Italian one in this segment, we can continue to make a difference.
