OQ Technology was founded to extend the 5G internet-of-things and machine communication coverage beyond the cell towers to the poorly connected areas and remote and rural regions using a network of low Earth-orbiting nanosatellites. To learn more about the company, everything RF interviewed Omar Qaise, Founder & CEO of OQ Technology.
Q. Can you tell us about OQ Technology? When was the company founded and what was its objective?
Omar Qaise: OQ Technology was founded at the end of 2016 in Luxembourg to extend the 5G internet-of-things and machine communication coverage beyond the cell towers to the poorly connected areas and remote and rural regions using a network of low Earth-orbiting nanosatellites. Today we are proud to be the first 5G IoT satellite operator in the world, we have offices in Luxembourg, Dubai, Africa, and incorporating in the US. We tested narrowband IoT waveforms over LEO satellites successfully in 2019 and over GEO satellites in 2021 and last week we launched our first commercial satellite (Tiger-2) aboard SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The launch was successful and our satellite entered its orbit and we managed to establish contact. We have also filed important NB-IoT over satellite patents in Europe and the US and participated in 3GPP 5G non-terrestrial networks release 17 standards.
Q. What does OQ Technology do?
Omar Qaise: 5G comes with 3 main services: enhanced mobile broadband eMBB, massive machine type communication mMTC, and ultra-low latency communication uRLLC. We are focusing on the mMTC and uRLLC parts as we can address this service with our scalable NB-IoT and LTE-M technology aboard the satellite and being in low earth orbit like 550 Km altitude we can have low latency below 10 ms that can address many critical applications that traditional geostationary satellites cannot do because of the high latency in signal transmission.
We offer two types of connectivity services:
1-Direct-to-Satellite where an NB-IoT module can connect directly to our satellite anywhere in the world.
2- Aggregator-Model where gateway collects data from different sensors through wired/wireless links such as Bluetooth, Wifi, serial port, etc, and then send the data up to the satellite. Both models have their use cases.
We offer KBytes and Megabytes packages per month + hardware if needed. We do wholesale of capacity so we work with service providers, MNOs and MVNOs.
Q. What are some use cases OQ Technology is enabling?
Omar Qaise: Energy Sector: Oil and Gas upstream and midstream, such as monitoring oil and gas pipes and offshore rig monitoring.
Logistics: continuous outdoor and indoor tracking of assets.
Maritime: container tracking.
Smart Farming: monitoring of farms, cattle, and precision irrigation/seeding/harvesting.
Smart cars and unmanned drones: control and monitoring, and telematics.
Q. Can you tell us about the Satellites you use? How many satellites do you use? What orbits are they in? Do you own them?
Omar Qaise: We use nanosatellites, these are Showbox size (30 x 20 x 10 cm) which are quick and cheap to build and launch (300 times cheaper than traditional satellites) and we will be launching more than 60 of those within the next 2 years. We own the satellites but sometimes we host the 5G payload (cell tower part) on third-party satellites. They are in low earth orbit (500 -600 Km).
Q. What is the hybrid satellite / cellular terminal that you have developed? What are its main features?
Omar Qaise: The terminal actually addresses multiple user needs: it is compact and low cost, has a rechargeable battery and wired/wireless interfaces to different types of customer sensors/devices. It has a good gain antenna that can provide decent bitrate enough to transfer low-resolution videos and voice also, in addition to data, it can sustain harsh environments, and it has a dual-mode cellular/satellite sim card slot. It is 10 times cheaper than existing satellite user terminals.
Q. We saw that you recently collaborated with Spaceflight and NanoAvionics for launching World’s First 5G IoT Satellite? Can you tell us more about this?
Omar Qaise: We worked with spaceflight in Seattle to secure a spot on SpaceX rocket to be launched on time and they have been very proactive in that and we will continue our collaboration with them for future launches, while with Nanoavionics we have a long-standing relationship for building our satellites and integrating our 5G payload into them.
Q. What makes you different from other companies?
Omar Qaise: Most companies are either legacy companies with expensive hardware and service or are new entrants that are trying to build an ecosystem from scratch with their proprietary technologies, as they have no frequency licensed to access or use unlicensed bands that suffer from interference and poor quality or pay huge amounts to incumbent operators to lease few kilohertz of the spectrum that is not scalable.
We follow the existing standard of cellular IoT as dictated in 3GPP. There is an ecosystem of players and customers, we use existing chips and hardware, we have licensed frequency bands, and our technology is scalable, protected, and tested in orbit.
Q. What are the data packages that you offer? How expensive are the packages?
Omar Qaise: We offer 1KB/day, 10 KB/day, 1 MB/day, and in the future 10 MB/day, they are similar in price to terrestrial cellular data plans.
Q. What is the TIGER mission and MACSAT mission?
Omar Qaise: Tiger mission is our first mission to start a basic satellite IoT service with existing customers. The MACSAT mission done in collaboration with the European Space Agency and Luxembourg Space Agency will have an advanced 5G IoT payload capable of high capacity processing.
Q. Does the OQ Technology Solution have/require licenses to operate in all countries? If not, which countries can the solution currently be used in?
Omar Qaise: It depends on the country but currently, we have access to the Middle East, Africa, and South America and working to expand this footprint.
Q. What is the roadmap for OQ Technology over the next 5 years?
Omar Qaise: We have great technology and solution and we aim to be the number one satellite 5G IoT provider in the world, this is where we see ourselves in the next 5 years, our customer pipeline is building up rapidly with a multi-billion dollar value.
About Omar Qaise
Mr. Omar Qaise is the Founder and CEO of OQ Technology, a multinational newspace company building a global 5G IoT LEO satellite constellation dedicated to 5G massive machine communication that can provide connectivity anywhere, especially in remote and rural areas. Omar brings tremendous experience and heritage to his venture as he worked many years in different organizations and enterprises in the satellite and telecommunication industry including the European Space Agency (ESA), German Aerospace Centre (DLR), SES ASTRA, OHB SYSTEMS, EUMETSAT, and SES Satellites where he worked on telecom satellites and closed multi-million deals for the satellite telecom companies in the oil and gas industry. During he realized there is a market gap to be filled by low Earth orbit satellites and 5G and he created OQ Technology to address this market.
