The SmallSat Europe conference at the RAI Congress Centre in Amsterdam heard speaker after speaker express anxiety over the planned European IRIS2 mega-constellation. The project, which will eventually bring together low Earth orbit, mid-Earth and geostationary satellites in a global ring of craft with ultra-secure communications, is looking extremely fragile if the event’s speakers are […]
Starlink subscribers around the world pay anything between $120 (USA), A$139 (Australia), €49 (average in Europe) and Ksh 6500 (in Kenya). But SpaceX has a major dilemma in setting its pricing structure in India. Not only is India a market with plenty of established cellular competition, but also vigorous competition from Eutelsat’s OneWeb and RelianceJio/SES, […]
Elon Musk’s previous comments that South Africa’s government was allegedly “racist” were raised during the tense meeting between President Trump and President Cyril Ramaphosa in the White House last week. Musk was present during the meeting but did not speak. South African billionaire Johann Rupert did speak and moved to quell tensions with remarks that […]
The upcoming launch of SpaceX’s giant Starship has been approved by the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA). The FAA has examined SpaceX’s history on the anomaly which led to the loss of Starship #8 and has now cleared Flight 9 for launch. “The FAA conducted a comprehensive safety review of the SpaceX Starship Flight 8 mishap […]
The 2001 merger of Time Warner and AOL is up there in most analysts’ top 10 of worst, and most value destroying, deals ever. But those troubles were meant to have been long left behind with the much later deal to drop any reference to Time, merge with Discovery and resurrect the old Warner Brothers […]
AST SpaceMobile (AST) is expected to launch the first of its giant ‘second generation’ BlueBird satellites in July, and eventually will have around 250 satellites in orbit and will provide global direct-to-cellular and other broadband services. Bankers are getting increasingly enthusiastic about the company. Deutsche Bank, for example, in one of its ‘Stocks in Focus’ […]
A report on the satellite industry from investment bank BNP-Paribas highlights that a new auction of satellite C-band spectrum (in particular for US 5G use) “is back and too big to ignore”. The report continues: “As is the €800 billion ReArm Europe plan, with its focus on satellite communications. Geopolitical tailwinds are supportive. But amid […]
Visitors to Japanese public broadcaster NHK and its NHK Labs R&D division’s Tech Expo 2025 (opening May 26th) can take an early look at some of the company’s broadcasting developments. Top of the list is NHK’s Scene-adaptive camera. When capturing wide field-of-view footage like 360-degree videos, you often encounter various subjects in bright, dark, or […]
Satellite operator Eutelsat saw its share price fall by almost 12 per cent on its Q3 revenue statement last week. BNP-Paribas, the financial services company, has now issued a report on the satellite operator. Sami Kassab, analyst at BNP-Paribas, headlined his note to clients as “More headwinds ahead” and while stressing that Eutelsat’s financial reports […]
Last week the UK’s High Court rejected an application by cellular operator EE (which was acquired by BT in 2016) for an interim injunction against London-based speciality satellite operator Avanti Communications. The application concerned Avanti’s alleged threat to withdraw its satellite links for EE, unless EE agreed to a “substantially increased fee rate” for its […]