Bahrain is threatening to quit the Arabsat satellite consortium, unhappy that Arabsat has, in its view, failed to take down certain channels that are broadcasting content not to Bahrain’s liking. Satellite operator Arabsat is owned by a consortium of Arab telecommunications companies, mostly themselves owned by their governments. Bahrain says Arabsat is “failing to take […]

Elon Musk, the wealthy owner of rocket launch company SpaceX, is considering building a new satellite launch site in southern Texas, south of Corpus Christi, and almost on the Mexican Border. The plans call for a launch site to be built near Brownsville in Cameron County (and specifically south of Port Isabel). Musk’s company has […]

So James Murdoch has quit as chairman of BSkyB. That phrase implies he had a choice, which isn’t really true. The other investors in Sky – who, let us remember, own most of it – were getting nervous that under the continued scrutiny of Parliament and Ofcom the presence of Murdoch in the chair was, […]

Journalist, BBC commentator and founding Chairman of BSkyB forerunner Sky TV Andrew Neil, addressing SES Astra’s annual Satellite Monitor unveiling, gave some valuable clues as to how the current News Corporation/BSkyB ownership predicament might unfold. ‘First, the Murdochs have to go,’ Neil implied. He explained that the current 39 per cent News Corp ownership position […]

In terms of revelations, Panorama provided not much that wasn’t already known, or assumed, in the NDS hacking saga: Criminals allege criminal behaviour in the inevitably very murky world of encryption, hacking and counter measures. NDS admit hacking – to test its rival’s technology – and it is accepted as standard practice. NDS strenuously denies […]

Last week, peace broke out for the briefest of moments in the never-ending patent battles over TiVo’s IP. Last week, it was with Microsoft where TiVo and Microsoft “settled their differences” although no further details were released. Now, however, a fresh batch of writs has been issued against media heavyweights Motorola Mobility and Time Warner […]

Casbaa’s special India Forum, which took place earlier this week in New Delhi, saw some delegates express anxiety that India’s planned digitisation scheme could become bogged down in litigation. There were also grumbles that India’s recent budget had done nothing to benefit the cable industry by means of lowering duties on set-top boxes, or encouraging […]

Investment banker Morgan Stanley says that CEO Brian Sullivan and his fellow senior managers at Sky Deutschland are in a “positive mood” about current subscriber trends. Moreover, Sullivan said Sky Deutschland is “quietly confident” of winning access to the all-important Bundesliga football matches. Bidding for the Bundesliga opens in two weeks’ time, on April 2nd, […]

Around this time next year, Paris-based Eutelsat is due to orbit its powerful 6,000 kgs 25B satellite to the 25.5 degrees East position broadcasting to the Arab world. The trouble is that Saudi Arabian-based Arabsat already has a trio of satellite in the position (adjacent at 26 degrees East). Indeed, the Arabsat BADR-series are extremely […]

Eutelsat says while accidental/human error creates some 58 per cent of the interference suffered by satellite operators, a staggering 10 per cent is caused by either intentional (6 per cent) or so-called ‘pirate’ signal (4 per cent) problems. The intentional interference comes from either rogue states, or Earth Stations operating with no regard for the […]