Bell Canada has announced it is launching a direct-to-cell satellite service in 2026 – offering customers video, voice, text and broadband data – through a partnership with Texas-based AST SpaceMobile. It’s the latest effort by the Canadian company to provide connectivity to the country’s most rural and challenging geographies, as global space companies race to […]

Two massive AST SpaceMobile (AST) satellites will take place shortly. The first called BlueBird 6 (also known as FM1) will be on its way to India for a launch. The second, BlueBird 7 (aka FM2) will be launched by SpaceX and will be delivered to Cape Canaveral during October. But these two AST satellites are […]

AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 6 satellite, also known as FM1, has “completed final assembly and testing and is ready for flight” according to a company statement. The satellite has been a long time reaching this point and was originally expected to launch much earlier this summer. It will now ship to India on a giant Antonov […]

AST SpaceMobile has announced its 100 per cent acquisition of EllioSat, in a deal first announced in August. AST said its reason for the purchase was because EllioSat “holds certain S-Band ITU priority rights to MSS (Mobile Satellite Services) frequencies in the range of 1980-2010 MHz and 2170-2200 MHz, for use in low Earth orbit”. […]

Carlos Slim, the billionaire Mexican owner of América Móvil, is reportedly investing more cash in AST SpaceMobile. Slim is already an investor in AST and his daughter sits on AST’s board of directors. The total amount involved is said to be an overall $22 billion (€18.6bn) spread over a period of time although some of […]

A detailed report from analysts at Bank of America (BoA) says that the global Total Addressable Market (TAM) is currently worth around $200 billion (€169.5bn) annually for the planet’s telcos. The bank suggests that the satellite operators with global coverage with their low Earth orbiting (LEO) satellites are potentially targeting every dollar’s worth of these […]

The Delaware bankruptcy court will rule today [September 22nd] on the transfer of spectrum from Ligado Networks and related businesses to AST SpaceMobile. The ruling is not unexpected because the deal was agreed in June. The hearing, before Judge Thomas Horan, will sign-off the pre-agreed resolution which sees AST pay $550 million (of which $535 […]

The global satellite IoT communications market is growing at a good steady pace according to a research report from specialist IoT analyst firm Berg Insight. The global satellite IoT subscriber base grew to surpass 5.8 million in 2024. The number of satellite IoT subscribers will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 41.1 […]

The next battleground, according to expert speakers at the World Space Business Week in Paris, is the fight for Direct-to-Device connectivity from satellite. Starlink has more than 7 million customers, but has “little or no chance” to extend its service to voice services for at least two years, said Starlink president and COO Gwynne Shotwell. […]

The Novaspace World Space Business Week event in Paris heard an expert panel talk about their Direct-to-Device (D2D) satellite plans. Scott Wisniewski, President of AST SpaceMobile, told delegates that the stage his D2D business was now at was to move to revenue generation using its partnerships with the likes of Vodafone, Verizon and AT&T. AST […]