Advanced Television

Inside Satellite

Chris Forrester

Chris Forrester is one of the most experienced and highly regarded journalists in the field. His insight and analysis, particularly in the satellite and pay-TV arena, is highly prized. He has written for all the major business journals in the sector as well as several national newspapers.

Inmarsat: “Time to put cards on the table”

Last week Inmarsat’s board firmly rejected a second tentative bid from EchoStar, which had talked about paying £5.32 a share for the London-based global satellite operator. A report from the equity team at Berenberg Bank suggests it is now time for Inmarsat to lay its cards on the table, given that the operator’s somewhat volatile […]

July 13, 2018

Airbus seeks extra satellite business from US

Airbus Space & Defence is already involved in an $85 million joint-venture with would-be satellite operator OneWeb to build a satellite manufacturing factory at Port Canaveral, in Florida. The plan is to shortly start building the first of an initial 900 satellites for the SoftBank-backed OneWeb project to girdle the planet with a new constellation […]

July 11, 2018

Could Ergen use DISH to move on Inmarsat?

EchoStar last week decided to walk away from its pursuit of Inmarsat having tried a £5.32 per share bid. EchoStar now cannot re-bid for the next six months unless invited to do so by Inmarsat. However, Sami Kassab, an equity analyst at investment bank Exane/BNPP suggests an alternate scenario, and asks whether Charlie Ergen, founder […]

July 10, 2018

Measat wants major new satellite

Malaysian satellite operator Measat says it is looking to order a major ‘high throughput satellite’ (HTS) that it wants in orbit by 2021. Speaking at the APSAT conference in Jakarta, Indonesia, Measat’s COO Yau Chyong Lim said the new craft would be co-located with its other satellites at its ‘hot spot’ at 91.5 degree East. […]

July 6, 2018

WBU argues against C-band changes

Not so many years ago Intelsat and SES were arguing strongly for satellite’s C-band frequencies to be protected from would-be predators especially those in the cellular community. Now, with the potential of millions (and some say billions) of dollars of benefits to flow to satellite operators from reassigning some C-band frequencies over the US for […]

July 2, 2018

Will VR go the way of 3D?

A provocative comment on the future of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) consumer take-up comes from specialist publication Display Daily, and asks whether VR will go the way of 3D. Steve Sechrist, a well-regarded industry analyst, asks when will consumers start buying into to face-worn technology. His own answer is that it should have […]

June 29, 2018

“Continuous decline” in satellite DTH reach

Analysts at Dataxis have recently published their Q1 statistics on the European pay-TV market, and say that the total subscriber numbers rose just 0.3 per cent compared to Q4/2017. This has prompted a note to clients from investment bank Exane/BNPP which points out that this is the lowest net growth ever observed by Dataxis. The […]

June 28, 2018

Eutelsat move for Inmarsat “just tyre kicking”

One equity analyst thinks Eutelsat’s potential bid for London-based Inmarsat is “questionable” and “offers no strategic benefits to Eutelsat’s core Video and Consumer Broadband” services which represent 80 per cent of Eutelsat’s revenue streams. Eutelsat itself stressed June 26th (and just 24 hours after saying that it was interested) that it does not intend to […]

June 27, 2018

EchoStar “formal bid” for Inmarsat likely

A note to clients from investment bank Exane/BNPP says that, in the bank’s view, “Echostar is likely to make a formal bid for Inmarsat.” The Exane note examines the rationale behind EchoStar’s move and how EchoStar’s co-founder and chairman, Charlie Ergen, might value the target business. The bank states: “The key question in our view […]

June 26, 2018

EchoStar’s Inmarsat bid gains traction

Denver-based EchoStar on June 22nd revealed it had bought a 3 per cent equity stake in satellite operator Inmarsat, and had mopped up 10.4 per cent of Inmarsat’s convertible bonds. The news sent Inmarsat’s share’s into orbit, rising 10.6 per cent. The financial moves were made prior to EchoStar’s recent approach to acquire Inmarsat and […]

June 25, 2018