The NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) has awarded SES a contract to deliver secure high-performance low-latency satellite services via its medium earth orbit (MEO) constellation, enabling global missions for NATO member government organisations, agencies and military. The MEO Global Services (MGS) award represents a three-year Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract valued at $200 million […]
AT&T’s CEO John Stankey has praised AST SpaceMobile in an interview on CNBC, saying: “Satellite constellations are going to be great. People are going to have always on connectivity, there will be no more [dead spaces] and this is why we are doing what we are doing with AST which will make sure that your […]
On September 8th Elon Musk told an enquirer on X that Starlink’s satellite broadband service is awaiting regulatory approval in South Africa. However, according to regulator Icasa, it has not received a licence application. Icasa made an unambiguous statement on September 9th saying: “Please note that Icasa has not received an application [from Starlink] as […]
SpaceX’s Starlink factory in Bastrop, Texas, is now the company’s largest hardware manufacturing unit, and is in business and expanding further. Local comments suggest the factory, which opened in July 2023 and is adjacent to Elon Musk’s Boring Company, is approximately double in size. The Texas factory is capable of producing 90,000 Starlink broadband terminals […]
The Federal Communications Commissioners (FCC) are due to meet and vote on September 26th to potentially free up extra bandwidth for satellite communications. FCC chair Jessice Rosenworcel has written saying that freeing up 1,300 MHz in the 17 GHz band (17.3-17.8 GHz) for high-throughput satellite communications would “facilitate the deployment of high-speed broadband and other […]
On September 5th a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket placed its 7,001st Starlink satellite into orbit. That’s good news, and amongst that number there were 13 of its Direct to Cell (D2C) versions capable of communications direct to smartphones. Those D2C satellites now number 181 in orbit. But a report from Scotiabank itemises the very real […]
Reports from India say that the various permissions for direct-from-satellite broadband services are again awaiting action. India’s authoritative Financial Express (FE) says that the country’s department of telecommunications (DoT) is unlikely to issue any provisional or interim spectrum to companies such as Eutelsat OneWeb and Jio to commercially roll out their satellite internet services soon. […]
UK comms regulator Ofcom is proposing to grant an earth station network licence to Amazon Kuiper Services Europe SARL (Kuiper) for its non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) satellite system, which is also known as ‘Kuiper’. This would authorise it to deploy user terminals (the dishes and antennas used by customers to connect to an NGSO satellite system) […]
Canada-based satellite operator Telesat has sold its Infosat Communications subsidiary which specialised in remote satellite services. Infosat has been acquired by Calgary-based Network Innovations, with some 300 employees, for an undisclosed sum. However, Telesat’s president & CEO Dan Goldberg had earlier hinted that it would raise about C$10 million (€6.67m) by selling a non-core division. […]
Deutsche Bank has looked again at how it values AST SpaceMobile, and has trebled its share price target from $22 (€19.82) per share to a spectacular $63. AST says SpaceX will launch five of its BlueBird Block 1 satellites on September 12th subject to the usual weather and technical considerations. The bank forecasts a revenue […]