Non-Terrestrial Networks: A Position Paper on Why These Networks are Important to the Federal Government

The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has defined a standards-based Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) framework that enables economies of scale, a multi-vendor, interoperable, continuous service, and backwards compatible capabilities between generations for NTN. It is designed to support any device, orbit, service, frequency bands, beam size/type, natively 5G features, global connectivity, improved quality of experience, and reliability through multiple connectivity across terrestrial and satellite access, with spectrum coexistence between satellite and terrestrial systems.