A recent report informed us that the City of London Police are, along with the Intellectual Property Office, setting up a special unit to tackle digital piracy and counterfeiting. The IPO is going to provide £2.5 million over two years for the unit. Not exactly the FBI is it? I’m guessing that sum is less […]
International Launch Services (ILS) which markets the launch of Proton rockets for the world’s commercial satellite operators, has distanced itself from the catastrophe, saying that its missions use an older – and tried and tested – version of the rocket that blew up. Additionally, ILS says it will set up its own independent failure review […]
Larry Gerbrandt finds parallels between the development of the aviation and television industries. I spent several summers working my way through college in a fruit-canning plant where my grandfather was a manager. During one of our evening conversations, it dawned on me that he had witnessed the entire evolution of aviation, from the Wright Brothers […]
Having now firmly abandoned his attempt to secure more terrestrial wireless spectrum via Sprint/Nextel and Clearwire, Dish Network’s founder Charlie Ergen – never one to be idle – must be pondering his next chess move. It is worth remembering that it wasn’t so very long ago that Dish was pursuing wireless carrier T-Mobile’s assets in […]
Although a day later than planned, the first four satellites in the O3b Networks constellation were successfully launched from the French Guiana site atop a Russian Soyuz rocket on June 25th. This first batch of satellites will now be placed into their correct Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) and in stand by for the second batch […]
Bosses at India’s TataSky DTH operation say they are desperate for additional transponder capacity, and are being deliberately stymied by officials at state-owned Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which administers all satellite activity over the sub-Continent. TataSky says it is contemplating legal actions against ISRO. TataSky uses Insat 4A as its core orbital service. TataSky […]
Eutelsat 3B, currently being built by Astrium, will be orbited by the Sea Launch floating platform in April next year. The order is a major achievement for Sea Launch which has suffered some problems with its Zenit launch rocket. Eutelsat 3B will weigh some 6 tonnes at launch and serve Europe, Africa & the Middle […]
This weekend sees Paris-based Eutelsat celebrate 30 years in space. Thirty years ago the operator launched Eutelsat 1-F1, as the first satellite of a system designed to support communications across Europe. It heralded the start of satellite TV by beaming the first television channels to cable networks in continental Europe and to a nascent group of users who demonstrated the potential of Direct-to-Home reception. A new […]
Singapore Telecom’s Optus satellites are up for sale. Optus operates throughout Australia where it is the second-largest telco. Singapore Telecom is widely reported to be seeking up to $1.9 billion dollars for the satellite assets which include five satellites in orbit. SingTel paid $9.69 billion for the complete Optus business. Australia’s NewSat is now reported […]
ITV, the UK’s leading commercial network, is riding high, helped by an upbeat report from a leading analyst. The situation might be even better in Luxembourg, home to RTL. RTL is Europe’s largest commercial broadcaster and owns the Number 1 networks in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Hungary and Luxembourg. But the past few years have […]