French and US satellite communications company E-Space is working with UAE telco Etisalat to develop global IoT, smart-IoT and digital transformation offerings.

E-Space is a space company focused on bridging Earth and space with a sustainable low Earth orbit (LEO) network.

The collaboration seeks to increase the end-user value derived from borderless smart connectivity and digital options across land, sea and sky applications. The cooperation will focus on the creative development of cloud-native digital and IoT options optimised with edge-based artificial intelligence (AI).

By leveraging Etisalat brand e&’s terrestrial infrastructure and E-Space’s space system, including its global LEO constellation and device capabilities, the two organisations plan to create business models to elevate IoT and digital transformation agendas of governments and large-scale enterprises worldwide.

“Telecommunications and space technology have a natural synergy, offering enormous opportunities for telco companies to expand their reach and capabilities,” said Mikhail Gerchuk, e& CEO. “From satellite internet to space-based sensors, at e& we see the potential to revolutionise the way we connect, communicate and gather data from space. We will offer a multi-technology platform enabling our customers to embrace a digital-first lifestyle more efficiently. We are confident we can leverage our combined expertise to create seamless global digital IoT experiences to help our customers advance their digital transformation plans.”

The relationship is expected to facilitate e& customer data to connect directly to private data centres without interference from commercial traffic by using peer-to-peer space-based communications to address security and data protection policies and regulations worldwide. Both parties will jointly develop IoT and digital technology based on AI at the edge as well as everywhere in-between to enable system-wide intelligent decisions and take automated actions to levels beyond traditional IoT.

“There are tremendous opportunities in the terrestrial domain that can be amplified with the use of newer generation space systems coupled with edge AI,” said Greg Wyler, CEO of E-Space. “We’re bringing real-time information with advanced automation to create entirely new suites of global capabilities to advance humanity, improve the planet and automate business processes for greater operational scale and efficiency with reduced costs. We are excited to work with e& to advance their digital transformation journey and augment the customer experience. Together, we can speed the time required to build a smarter, more connected planet, anywhere and anytime.”

The collaboration also involves the joint development of global IoT use cases, which will have the potential to create revenue streams, especially in global tracking and agriculture, using an optimised satellite ecosystem. The portfolio for IoT and digital products can further expand to enable products across land, sea and air environments, anywhere and at any time, with speeds ranging from kilobits to megabits per second.

E-Space expects to offer the most sustainable and affordable satellite-based system in the digital and IoT ecosystem with coverage available everywhere to support uninterrupted, global real-time data services. The company estimates it can deliver an over 90 per cent reduction in overall system and terminal costs compared with second-generation LEO networks, enabling more governments, business, communities and individuals to access the power of space to achieve more on Earth.