Spain will finally award 5G 700 MHz-licences in July with a 15 per cent discount on the initial price (€1.17 billion) to start at €995.5 million, the lowest in Europe. At the operators’ request, the Administration has reduced the starting price on the grounds that it will boost 5G development and investment in the country […]
China is forming a dedicated business to create and manage a massive fleet of 13,000 Low Earth orbiting (LEO) satellites. The system is designed to compete – at least locally – with Elon Musk’s Starlink global system. The creation of the new business seems to suggest that Musk will find it impossible to openly seek […]
Canada’s Innovation, Science & Economic Development (ISED) ministry has set out its proposals on how it will auction off satellite C-band frequencies in an 87-page document. Telesat, the current user of most of the C-band spectrum, had hoped to auction the spectrum itself in order to part-fund its expensive ‘Lightspeed’ Low Earth orbiting fleet of […]
South Africa’s spectrum regulator, ICASA, has awarded spectrum licences to a cluster of smaller operators but not to the nation’s established players. The new bandwidth is likely to be used for 5G services. Newcomers Comsol Networks, Nthinte Communications, Real Time Communications, Marion Technology and One Telecom have reportedly been granted 60 MHz of bandwidth each […]
Viasat has been authorised to offer satellite broadband services to and from Nigeria. The company has kicked off a consumer and community trial to connect about 15,000 people. Viasat says it now holds a full suite of broadband licences including those of a conventional ISP as well as VSAT licences. Nigeria’s Communications Commission (NCC) granted […]
The global future of 5G is at risk if governments fail to align on licensing 6 GHz spectrum, according to mobile operator trade body the GSMA. The full speed and capabilities of 5G depend on the 6 GHz mid-band spectrum, it asserts. Yet governments are already diverging: China will use the entire 1200 MHz in […]
Ottawa-based Telesat is sitting on some valuable C-band spectrum, and completely favours selling off some of that spectrum itself. The sale of 200 MHz of capacity would generate cash to help pay for its fleet of Low Earth orbiting (LEO) satellites, called Lightspeed. Telesat’s CEO Dan Goldberg told analysts that it would like to handle […]
SES used its Q1 results statement to announce a €100 million share buy-back programme, declaring that it had made a strong start to this financial year. Its currently all-important Video division is moving steadily forward. SES has seen Video revenues grow from a minus 8 per cent overall y-o-y fall to a minus 4.6 per […]
US multiplay telco Verizon is continuing to prepare for 5G Ultra Wideband expansion across its newly-acquired national footprint of C-band spectrum. In a recent lab trial, Verizon worked with Ericsson and MediaTek to aggregate C-band spectrum with mmWave spectrum, achieving speeds of 4.3 Gbps in the trial. “The depth of our spectrum portfolio, now the […]
UK comms regulator Ofcom has announced the final results of the auction for spectrum in the 700 MHz and 3.6-3.8 GHz bands, following completion of the remaining stages. In March 2021, it announced the results of the principal stage, which determined how much spectrum each of the four bidders – EE Limited, Hutchison 3G UK […]