While the communications industry keeps rolling out new ways to get video, games, sports highlights and every other form of entertainment directly to your cellular phone, the market demand is still a giant unknown, says Mark Dankberg, chair and chief executive of San Diego-based commercial satellite communications provider ViaSat.

“The market is almost unknowable,” says Dankberg, who moderated a June 14 panel discussion on satellite mobile entertainment and data at the International Satellite and Communications Expo in San Diego. “If you ask people, ‘Do you want this?’ They say, ‘No.’ But if they see it, they have a different reaction.”

Dankberg says other uncertainties include the importance of brand names to consumers and whether they really want content, such as sports video, in real time.

Still, Dankberg believes the market is wide open for exploration to a diverse bunch of industry players including tower operators, carriers, device makers and especially mobile satellite service/ancillary terrestrial components (MSS/ATC). ATC refers to the ground-component of mobile satellite communications offered by SATCOM service providers.

“I would bet a lot that at least one MSS/ATC player will find mobile entertainment an irresistible market,” says Dankberg.