The months of extensive lobbying in favour of a privately-held C-band spectrum auction came to naught when FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, in a Tweet on November 18th said: “After much deliberation and a thorough review of the extensive record, I’ve concluded that the best way to advance these principles is through a public auction of […]
Most analysts had expected the C-Band Alliance of satellite operators to volunteer 25 per cent of their anticipated revenues in a ‘windfall’ tax paid to the US Treasury. But in a major filing to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on November 15th, they now say they’ll use a ”progressive” formula which ranges from 30 per […]
There have been many formal filings to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by Eutelsat, explaining their strategy as far as the proposed reallocation of C-band is over the US. Inside Satellite spoke to a senior Eutelsat spokesperson on the background to their thinking, and in particular to their controversial proposals to offer up a 50 […]
It is unlikely that the world’s two major satellite operators, Intelsat and SES, have ever experienced such dramatic collective meltdowns in their share prices. Of course, there have been profit warnings from time to time, but nothing to compare with this week’s catastrophic collapse in their company theoretical values. As this is written, SES has […]
It hasn’t been a prosperous time for the C-Band Alliance of Intelsat, SES and Telesat. Both Intelsat and SES suffered significant mark-downs in the share prices on the back of negative comments from investment bank JPMorgan with its comments (which was reported on November 13th). In essence, the bank says that there are serious concerns […]
Europe’s leading independent private telecoms companies have formed a new industry association – GIGAEurope. Built on the foundations of Cable Europe, the association will promote the industry’s interests, and in the longer term become an umbrella organisation for a broad section of the connectivity industry. GIGAEurope’s founding members include most of the current Cable Europe […]
Intelsat’s share price fell back 12.34 per cent on November 12th, badly hurt by a negative report from investment bank JPMorgan and amid concerns that there are now significant “complications” in how the proposed C-Band Alliance might fare in the long-awaited FCC decision on reassignment of key satellite frequencies. JPMorgan specifically downgraded Intelsat from ‘Overweight’ […]
The C-Band Alliance on November 7th sent a strongly-worded seven-page letter to two senior members of the US House Sub-committee on Communications & Technology. The letter starts politely enough, telling Chairman Michael Doyle and Ranking Member Robert Latta that it wanted to correct some misstatements. But the message soon became blunt saying, in effect, ‘hands […]
US telco giant AT&T has proposed its own plan for a private C-band auction to reallocate satellite spectrum over the US. AT&T is almost certain to be a buyer of some of the released satellite spectrum. The AT&T ‘variation’ on the C-Band Alliance’s well-rehearsed scheme, suggests that the spectrum should be released extremely promptly and […]
The FCC has approved certain modifications as part of its formal approval of the proposed $26.5 billion merger between telcos Sprint and T-Mobile. The FCC had last month agreed the outline terms in a 3-2 vote from Commissioners. The FCC approval means that Dish/Echostar founder Charlie Ergen could now proceed and become a fourth wireless […]