I have had the honour of serving as the GVF’s outside counsel since shortly after its founding more than two decades ago and as the chair of its Regulatory Working Group from 2012 through 2015. What always excited me about GVF is its driving terrestrial purpose.
As highlighted in the GVF Constitution, GVF’s mission is not only focused on satellites in the sky, but on advancing the interests of the global VSAT industry on the ground. GVF’s terrestrial focus originally sought to labour on the extremely difficult task of securing ‘open skies’ market access in every country on the planet. To do this, GVF partnered with and championed the interests of service providers, system installers and integrators, equipment manufacturers and distributors in just about every country and region in the world. Thus, although GVF is proud to represent the interests of major satellite operators, the overwhelming majority of GVF’s members have never launched anything into space, working instead to deploy the ubiquitous networks of fixed and mobile ground stations that are necessary for satellite systems to fulfill the connectivity needs of industry, governments and consumers.