The race to bring satellite calls and texts to ordinary smartphones has begun, after UK comms regulator Ofcom announced its final decisions about how the technology can be rolled out. Mobile operators are now joining with satellite companies to deliver ‘direct-to-device services’ to everyday smartphones up and down the UK. This involves satellites hundreds of […]

SpaceX cracked another pair of records on December 7th. It used one of its Falcon 9 boosters for the 32nd time, itself a spectacular achievement. The booster (1067) was used on a launch from Kennedy Space Center and part of the cargo of Starlink satellites is the 3,000th to be launched this year – and […]

AST SpaceMobile, together with telco giant AT&T, is to start beta-tests of its Direct-to-Cellular satellite service over the US. A statement talked of using “real smartphones” in the tests and using the first five AST satellites already in orbit. AST is due to launch a much larger satellite in a week’s time from an Indian […]

Viasat, a specialist in satellite communications, has published a report revealing that rising demand for direct-to-device (D2D) satellite connectivity could open new revenue streams for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) — while posing a significant competitive challenge. The report – The Great Connectivity Convergence: NTN in Consumer Mobile – was conducted by GSMA Intelligence and surveyed more than 12,000 […]

SWISSto12, a Switzerland-based aerospace company, has issued a trading update, and the numbers are impressive.Key to the numbers is the market’s enthusiasm for the company’s HummingSat product. HummingSat is a smaller craft yet can operate at geostationary orbits. · 40 per cent revenue growth and 38 percent workforce expansion in 2025 · Significant progress on […]

Korean Air, alongside Asiana Airlines, Jin Air, Air Busan and Air Seoul, will introduce Starlink high-speed in-flight Wi-Fi to its entire fleet. This marks the first time a South Korean airline will adopt Starlink for in-flight connectivity, an initiative that aims to significantly elevate the passenger and crew experience ahead of the airlines’ full integration. […]

Airbus and Spacesail, a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellation operator, have announced a strategic partnership to integrate Spacesail’s advanced LEO connectivity into Airbus’s HBCplus inflight solution. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), signed at the 2025 Satellite Internet Industry Ecosystem Conference, aims at allowing Airbus’s High Bandwidth Connectivity Plus (HBCplus) customers to access an additional […]

The main news on Paris-based Eutelsat recently has been focused on cash-raising and its financial restructuring. Eutelsat is not alone in seeing in long-standing DTH satellite transmissions being under pressure and even though these broadcasts will almost certainly continue for a few decades yet, there’s no doubt that viewers are increasingly switching away from DTH […]

Moody’s Ratings has upgraded Eutelsat’s long-term debt to Ba3 from B2, the rating agency has announced. The upgrade follows Eutelsat’s announcement of a €670 million rights issue as part of its €1.5 billion capital raise. The company had already completed a reserved issuance on November 21st, which raised €828 million at €4.00 per share. The […]

A study by global tech strategist Juniper Research has found satellite provider revenue from direct-to-cell (D2C) will exceed $370 million (€279.9m) in 2026, up from $100 million this year. This substantial single-year growth of more than 260 per cent is fuelled by growing partnerships between mobile network operators (MNOs) and satellite operators, which are rolling out […]