HTS Market Set to Reach $76B as Industry Enters Terabit Era 

The “Starlink effect” is accelerating demand and reshaping the satellite connectivity market  

Paris, France – March, 2026 – Novaspace’s latest High Throughput Satellites (HTS) report shows global demand reaching 218 Tbps by 2034, while service revenues are set to more than double to $76 billion over the same period. 

The findings reflect a market entering a new phase of scale, driven by the rapid expansion of NGSO constellations – led by Starlink – and a step change in performance, pricing, and global adoption. 

“Starlink’s impact has been catalytic,” said Dimitri Buchs, Manager at Novaspace. “Lower-cost capacity, rapid scaling, and improved service quality have reset expectations across the market. The entire satcom ecosystem is now being pushed to innovate, differentiate, and rethink strategic positioning.” 

The report highlights a rapidly evolving competitive landscape across both GEO and NGSO systems: 

• GEO operators are adapting to remain competitive, adopting flexible, software-defined payloads and lower-CAPEX small GEO platforms to improve cost efficiency and throughput. 
• NGSO networks are redefining performance and pricing benchmarks, driving HTS service revenues up 44% between 2020 and 2025 – from $21.5 billion to nearly $31 billion. 
• High-growth applications are emerging, particularly in Land Mobility, MilSatCom, and Aero IFC, where demand for high-performance, low-latency connectivity is accelerating. 

As competition intensifies, differentiation is increasingly tied to spectrum strategy, security architecture, and sovereign capabilities. In a more geopolitically complex environment, secure and resilient connectivity is becoming a primary driver of investment, particularly across government and mission-critical use cases. 

At the same time, scaling this next phase of growth will require greater coordination across the ecosystem. The report underscores the growing importance of multi-orbit interoperability, hybrid terrestrial-satellite architectures, and converged network standards to enable more seamless and cost-effective deployments. 

“In this next phase, execution will be critical,” Buchs added. “Operators that can combine scale with flexibility – and deliver high-performance connectivity across multiple domains – will be best positioned to capture this expanding market.”