The Space Bottleneck: Optical ground infrastructure.
- "The industry has built roughly 10 percent of the optical ground infrastructure"
Now, who are the beneficiaries?
- $EOS.ASX (operating stations at Mt. Stromlo equipped with "adaptive optics.")
- $SKPJF (TYO: 9412) | $NTTYY | Space Compass is JV with NTT and satellite operator SKY Perfect JSAT
- $SGBAF - Works with Cailabs to for terrestrial optical terminals
- $SAFRY - Manufacturer of the optical ground stations
Then if it fails fallback would be names like:
$VSAT, $GILT
Analysis states that if the optical mesh fails due to clouds or lack of stations, the architecture "falls back to Ka-band RF links".
-> Near term capital flows to Relay Providers (Kepler, Space Compass, General Atomics).
-> Long term structural winners will be the photonics hardware manufacturers (Cailabs, Safran).
-> Then companies like SpaceX wins by default. Many are private.
"This infrastructure deficit is no longer just an engineering problem but a direct threat to a major White House [Golden Dome] policy objective"
Orbital laser communications market are hard-capped until physical ground infra scales, hence the current bottleneck.
But not quite sure if capex is to the scale of hyperscaler AI buildouts yet to benefit these companies enough.
