Apple has reportedly hired a pair of highly experienced satellite experts. Bloomberg Business News says the pair are John Fenwick, who led Google’s spacecraft operations, and Michael Trela, who headed up satellite engineering at Google. The two now report to Greg Duffy, co-founder of the camera company Dropcam, another former Googler, according to the Bloomberg […]
Global satellite operator Intelsat’s planned merger with Jersey-based OneWeb has suffered its first hiccup. Intelsat’s bondholders are not signing up to the proposed financial restructuring engineered by Japan’s media giant SoftBank and Intelsat has had to extend the acceptance period from its April 20th deadline to May 10th. To date, barely 1 per cent of […]
Intelsat is reportedly extending the timetable deadline for bondholders to accept the proposals of a proposed merger with giant satellite constellation OneWeb. Reuters reports that the merger – announced back in February – is conditional on gaining approval from at least 85 per cent of the face value held by Intelsat’s bondholders. The report suggest […]
There are no signs of strikers in French Guiana calling off their protests and allowing rocket company Arianespace resuming their launch activity. The strike is now in its 4th week. The strikers have brought the country to a near-standstill with roadblocks throughout the region. Their complaints centre on low wages, extremely high unemployment rates and […]
The past year or two have not been the best of times for satellite operators. In some markets, there has been over-capacity which has led – in some cases – to heavy discounting. In other sectors, it has been government (i.e. military) spending which has been trimmed. One firm of analysts, Northern Sky Research (NSR) […]
Orion, federal satellite operator in Russia and global TV operator SPI International / FILMBOX signed a distribution agreement based on which Orion now offers seven SPI channels on its Telekarta television platform and becomes the exclusive distributor of SPI channels in Russia. In the first stage of cooperation Orion has uplinked seven channels from the […]
The widespread labour strike in French Guiana shows no sign of ending. The action has forced rocket company Arianespace to suspend all work at the spaceport. The strike started on March 20th and now is more or less total with numerous road-blocks affecting all trade in the French colony. Some 37 labour unions are supporting […]
Satellite operator SES’s Board of Directors has approved a restructuring of SES’s go-to-market organisation model with the creation of two highly-focused business units, SES Video and SES Networks, focusing on the video- and data-centric segments in which SES operates. The new organisation, which will be implemented during the course of 2017, will gather all go-to-market […]
In Flight Entertainment and broadband connectivity company Gogo has contracted extra satellite transponder capacity from SES in order to meet what the pair describe as “surging Inflight demand in North America” for its video and broadband services. Gogo is taking an extra 12 transponders to cover North America aircraft flights and their journeys within the […]
Beijing Star Time Telecommunications Technology has emerged as the ‘secret’ business linked with Thailand’s Thaicom to build two giant communications satellites, and perhaps a new LEO constellation. One satellite is already being built by China’s Great Wall Industry Corp (CGWIC) and scheduled for launch in late 2019. CGWIC is one of Beijing Star Times (BST) […]