India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has thrown a spanner in the launch plans for Starlink in the country. A cynic might suggest that India doesn’t really want Starlink in its neighbourhood. Specifically, the DoT is requesting more information. The telecom department’s highest decision-making body has sought clarification from the Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRAI) on certain […]
The next battleground, according to expert speakers at the World Space Business Week in Paris, is the fight for Direct-to-Device connectivity from satellite. Starlink has more than 7 million customers, but has “little or no chance” to extend its service to voice services for at least two years, said Starlink president and COO Gwynne Shotwell. […]
Starlink, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, Eutelsat’s OneWeb and the SES/Jio plans for their satellite direct-to-consumer schemes might have an extra hurdle. Reports from India say that the government, which has been slow in issuing the necessary permits for these services to start, might now want to ‘cap’ or limit the number of subscribers they sign up. […]
The US cellular businesses of AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile have had their market presence threatened if not actually dented by the recent moves by EchoStar and Musk’s Starlink. The move by EchoStar in selling off large chunks of spectrum to AT&T (for terrestrial) and Starlink (for satellite) has put the whole sector under the microscope. […]
Analysts at investment bank TD Cowen have issued a note to clients saying that positive news from EchoStar could continue to flow. “EchoStar still owns the highly lucrative 700 and AWS-3 spectrum, in which we note that all three wireless carriers have a robust ecosystem,” TD Cowen analyst Gregory Williams wrote in a note for […]
FCC Commission Chair Brendan Carr, while speaking at the US Chamber of Commerce Global Aerospace Summit this week, praised the new wave of innovation and growth in the Space sector. “As a result, we now have new constellations of low-earth satellites that make it possible to deliver high-speed internet to remote locations and connect Americans […]
South Africa Broadcasting has been under financial pressures and severe monetary constraints for some years. Local reports say that pressure is mounting on communications minister Solly Malatsi to act to rescue the SABC as it struggles to pay its escalating bills. September 8th saw reports that State-owned signal distributor Sentech, whose primary client is SABC, […]
A report from ARK Investment Management forecasts that Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship business, which carried out its tenth test flight on August 26th, is likely to be valued at some $2.5 trillion (€2.1tn) by the end of the decade. The rocket’s upper Starship spacecraft, which is designed to one day carry cargo or humans to […]
According to the Indian government, the total number of broadband connections in the country at the end of 2024 stood at 944.96 million (cellular 903.78 million, wireline 41.19 million) and the market is growing. It is commonplace for millions of Indian consumers to own multiple handsets (one for work, for family, etc). But the market […]
AST SpaceMobile has received a positive upgrade from Bank of America. The bank has given the would-be broadband-to-consumer satellite operator a share price target of $55 (€46.89). AST is currently trading at about $42. The bank says it has based its target on a Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis and says a DCF valuation is […]