WHY JOIN?

The NTN Forum hosted by ESA, acts in the public interest. The forum provides a collaborative platform for all relevant stakeholders to enable the fostering of collective actions towards the development and implementation of Non-Terrestrial Network (“NTN”) solutions for 5G and 6G systems and related services that are a harmonious, non-discriminatory and market-driven.

Through collective efforts, the NTN Forum aims to drive innovation, shape industry standards, and promote the widespread adoption of NTN solutions.

The NTN Forum is open to participants from Industry with the ESA Member States, Associate Member States, Cooperating States, as well as non-ESA Member States.

Participation in the NTN Forum is free of charge and entails no exchange of funds for any purpose. All costs for participation are at the own cost of each participant and will not be reimbursed by ESA.

The NTN Forum seeks to:

• Bring together the perspectives of all interested stakeholders, including satellite, mobile and terrestrial network operators, and service providers, vertical stakeholders, network infrastructure vendors (space and terrestrial), satellite system integrators, satellite technology providers, 3GPP and cloud technology providers, NTN devices and chipsets manufacturers;
• Improve mutual understanding and collaboration between of all interested stakeholders in NTN design and deployment;
• Foster common understanding and ranking on potential future NTN standardisation activities in 3GPP and/or other standardisation bodies such ETSI, IEFT, among others;
• Create awareness of NTN related standards and how these respond to the needs of end users and verticals;
• Facilitate interactions and discussions on NTN topics important for verticals;
• Develop recipes for reference 5G/5G Advanced/6G NTN systems and features;
• Consolidate multiple verticals use cases and related NTN requirements;
• Facilitate interactions between NTN/TN experimentations groups;
• Facilitate interactions between NTN focused R&D activities;
• Create awareness about test, experimentations and demonstration opportunities for NTN ground, space assets and services;
• Sandboxes for NTN services features and testing reference tools where such tools are not available;
• Create awareness on NTN devices support from satellite stakeholders and the associated end users including verticals;
• Promote development of devices ecosystems for different NTN deployments, such as for. GSO, NGSO and multi-orbit;
• Promote involvement in devices related standards and industry initiatives such as 3GPP, GSMA TSG and GCF.

WHO CAN JOIN?

The NTN Forum is open to participants from Industry with the ESA Member States, Associate Member States, Cooperating States, as well as non-ESA Member States. In particular:

• Satellite operators
• Satellite network operators (physical/virtual)
• Satellite System Integrators
• Satellite Services Providers
• Vertical representatives
• Devices and chipset manufacturers
• Satellite technology providers
• Mobile network operators (physical/virtual)
• Telecom equipment manufacturers
• Terrestrial technology equipment manufacturers
• Cloud providers
• Software developers
• Research and development (R&D) organisations
• Universities
• Regulators
• Policy makers
• and any company or organisation willing to support the work

Building a representative membership and driving impactful partnerships

The NTN Forum gathers over 150 companies from satellite and terrestrial telecommunications industries, service providers, technology providers, R&D institutions, universities, as well as representatives of vertical sectors, associations and public authorities.

Our Members 

Please return to this page for an updated list of members of the NTN Forum.