Eight years in the making and two years overdue, there was celebration in French Guiana, Thailand and Australia this week as Shin Satellite's iPSTAR satellite was launched from French Guiana. The launch heralds the emergence of a new era of satellite broadband across regional and remote China and India, south East Asia, Australia and New Zealand. There were some anxious moments for Arianespace and Shin Satellite officials when a "premature ground segment measurement" forced a delay in the countdown to less than 18 minutes before the end of a two-hour launch window. But the countdown was revived at 5.14 and the launch went ahead. The 6,500kg iPSTAR promises 45Gbits of throughput targeted at most of east Asia and Australia from a geostationary position. The bird isn't the first promising broadband service - Inmarsat, for example, offers a broadband service via its BGAN service to almost all of the iPSTAR service area. But iPSTAR is the first to provide connectivity at prices pitched at close to terrestrial wireless or fixed prices - less than US$50 monthly with terminals starting at $1,000 and set to come down to around $500 as volumes rise.
The BaaS model has been adopted across a wide range of industries due to its ability to streamline financial processes for non-banks and foster innovation. BaaS has several industry-specific use cases, where it creates new revenue streams. Banking as a Service (BaaS) is rapidly emerging as a growth market, allowing non-bank businesses to integrate banking services into their core products and online platforms. As defined by Juniper Research, BaaS is "the delivery and integration of digital banking services by licensed banks, directly into the products of non-banking businesses, commonly through the use of APIs." BaaS Market Development The core idea is that licensed banks can rent out their regulated financial infrastructure through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to third-party Fintechs and other interested companies. This enables those organizations to offer banking capabilities like payment processing, account management, and debit or credit card issuance without