There are almost a dozen rivals looking to capitalise on satellite-to-broadband services including existing players Viasat, O3b, Eutelsat Konnect, Charlie Ergen’s Hughes/Echostar. Two extremely aggressive new players are Elon Musk’s Starlink system (a subsidiary of his SpaceX business), and Jeff Bezos’s Project Kuiper. Other players include O3b, OneWeb and Canadian Telesat. Musk’s president & COO […]
In-flight communications specialists Gogo now has more than 1000 of its Avance systems installed, almost totally in business and executive jet aircraft. The company says the systems have flown more than 108 million miles (in 175,000 flights). “When we launched the AVANCE L5, we knew it would delight our customers, but it’s surpassed all our […]
Eutelsat has extended its capacity agreement with in-flight entertainment company Gogo. As part of the new multi-year agreement, Gogo has leased HTS bandwidth on Eutelsat 10B satellite, to be leveraged over Europe and the Middle East. The new satellite is set to launch in 2022. “We are advancing capacity capabilities given the growing demand for […]
Barely a year ago the family of C-Band Alliance members (Intelsat, SES, Telesat, Eutelsat) were firm and repeatedly stated that they were prepared only to free up (in other words, sell) 180 MHz of their US spectrum for use by 5G players. Now, across the board, they seem enthusiastic about freeing up 300 MHz of […]
Eutelsat Communications has announced the launch of what is describes as “a pioneering satellite-based IoT connectivity service”: Eutelsat IoT FIRST. Having recently unveiled its ELO constellation of nanosatellites in Low Earth Orbit, dedicated to the Internet of Things, Eutelsat has taken further steps towards its ambition to become a leading satellite IoT company through the […]
The FCC is still on track for a decision on C-band spectrum this autumn, FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly said at Mobile World Congress Americas in Los Angeles on October 23rd. He spoke of various initiatives to free up extra spectrum for cellular use, including C-band, and stressed that the FCC has its eyes on 300 […]
Reportedly Maxar Technologies and Thales-Alenia Space have scrubbed their joint-venture plan to bid for Ottawa-based Telesat’s mega-constellation satellite order. The pair were competing against Airbus Defence & Space for the order. Now they will bid separately for the order for a 300-satellite Low Earth orbiting constellation, said to be worth around $3 billion to the […]
Eutelsat, in a formal filing to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), says that it is in favour of the C-Band Alliance – eventually – freeing up 300 MHz of spectrum over the US for 5G’s usage. Julie Burguburu, Eutelsat’s group general counsel, and Wladimir Bocquet, director of regulatory affairs, spectrum management and policy at Eutelsat, […]
SES and Thales have taken inflight connectivity to a new level, successfully demonstrating uninterrupted access to high-throughput broadband applications for the first time over a platform supporting multi-orbit interoperability, switching seamlessly between SES’s geostationary (GEO) and O3b medium earth orbit (MEO) satellite beams. The demo flight from Melbourne, Florida to the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua […]
The C-Band Alliance (CBA) used a letter to Senator John Kennedy, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and to Christopher Coons, a ranking member of the same committee. The letter was ostensibly to correct some misstatements made by two influential organisations. One “misrepresentation” came from David Williams of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance who in […]