Building on a Year of Strategic Partnerships and Technical Milestones
From innovative proof points and real validations to collaboration announcements and key leadership wins, ST Engineering iDirect continues to lead the way in satellite innovation. Our significant accomplishments in the past year pave the way to all that is to come.
Last year’s milestones included the announcement of the general availability of Intuition, our next-generation ground system. Built on a cloud-native, multi-orbit architecture, this release marks a turning point for ground infrastructure, introducing advanced capabilities designed to unify satellite operations, enhance adaptability, and maximize efficiency.
Read Press Release
The following recent developments are a testimony to our vision and the strong partnerships we have with those forging ahead to modernize their networks in a rapidly evolving industry.
Transforming Emergency Communications with Verizon
One of the most pivotal commercial achievements of 2025 was the selection of Intuition infrastructure to power Verizon’s Frontline emergency communications system. With an upgrade to Intuition’s virtualized, cloud-native architecture, Verizon has fundamentally transformed how satellite resources are managed across its network. This modernization significantly reduces the physical footprint at the teleport, streamlining operations while enhancing performance. This deployment serves as a definitive proof point for the operational agility that virtualized ground systems provide to Tier 1 operators.
Read Press Release
AI-Driven Operations: The Q-KON Success Story
Our collaboration with Q-KON demonstrated the value of AI in satellite operations. Together, we validated an AI-powered analytics platform designed to provide real-time insights into network behavior. Leveraging actual customer data from operations in Africa, the platform successfully identified a subtle installation anomaly that had the potential to degrade service quality. By detecting this issue proactively, Q-KON was able to intervene before users were impacted. This use case underscores how predictive analytics can shift operations from reactive troubleshooting to proactive optimization, thereby reducing operational expenditures (OPEX) and increasing network reliability.
Read Press Release
Visionary Leadership
Our CTO Sridhar Kuppanna was named CTO of the Year (Solution Provider, Global) in the Leadership Excellence category at The Fast Mode Awards 2025. This award highlights Sridhar’s visionary leadership and groundbreaking achievements in cloud-native satellite ground systems, AI-driven network automation, and 5G Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN).
Read Press Release
Advancing 5G NTN Network Solutions
We reached multiple key milestones in our 5G Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) strategy this year. The latest was a newly announced collaboration with Capgemini to develop a 5G NTN satellite base station. By integrating Capgemini’s proven 5G gNodeB software stack into our cloud-native Intuition ground system, the solution will enable seamless integration between satellite and terrestrial networks, paving the way for seamless roaming and global scalability. Earlier this year, our Satellite Interworking Gateway demonstration proved that a non-3GPP satellite network could operate seamlessly with the 5G core.
Read Press Release
The Path Forward
To kick off 2026, ST Engineering iDirect is laser focused on Collective Alignment, the coordinated adoption of shared standards by the satellite industry to accelerate global innovation, reduce total cost of ownership, accelerate time-to-market, and form deeper partnerships with Telco’s and mobile operators. Together we can enable multi-vendor ecosystems, seamless roaming, and the interoperability that a unified communications fabric requires.