June 4th saw a joint agreement from lawyers to Intelsat’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy court saying that they have provisionally set the date for the two-week trial between SES and Intelsat to begin “no later than October 30th”. Judge Keith Phillips has already indicated that the joint stipulation and consent order will be acceptable. The trial […]
Intelsat and SES, the two largest operators of C-band frequencies over the US, have completed Phase 1 of their clearance of spectrum by the important June 1st deadline. It means that the two, plus Eutelsat and Telesat of Canada, can qualify for the FCC’s initial end-of-year pay-out of some $2 billion in so-called incentive payments. […]
A hearing at the Intelsat Chapter 11 bankruptcy court adjourned the claim and related trial of the SES action against Intelsat over C-band payments until a date to be agreed in September or October. A very brief hearing in front of Judge Keith Phillips heard that the two parties had met and that a consent […]
A slew of objectors is grumbling to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) about Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system. We have reported on Viasat’s complaints, but SES, Hughes Network and others are also arguing for the FCC to either suspend or modify its April 27th permission for SpaceX/Starlink to alter their orbital plans. Some of the […]
Satellite operator SES has extended its capacity agreement with German-language religious channel Bibel TV Foundation. Bibel will take extra capacity on SES Astra from its European ‘hot spot’ at 19.2 degrees East. SES says the new agreement is for a multi-year contract. Viewers in the region will be able to receive Bibel TV’s full programming […]
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 […]
The European Union wants its own Low Earth orbiting mega-constellation of satellites for its citizens, and separate from the offerings from Elon Musk, OneWeb or Canada’s Lightspeed. The EU invited a consortium of industry suppliers to come up with a fast-track LEO scheme and Dominic Hayes, spectrum manager for the EU’s space programme at the […]
Intelsat’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy court denied Intelsat’s Motion (Ref: 1774 of March 31st) to compel SES to produce its communications with Hogan Lovells US LLP, who were the legal advisers to the C-Band Alliance for both Intelsat and SES. The hearing was held on May 17th and the court denied in its entirety the Intelsat […]
SES has issued a €625 million hybrid bond priced at a coupon of 2.875 per cent with a reset date of August 27th 2026. SES says the instrument’s credit ratings are expected to be Ba1/BB with Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s respectively. “Proceeds of the issuance will be used for general corporate purposes which includes […]
Investment bank Berenberg has issued a report on the state of play at satellite operator SES. The bank says that with SES no longer separating its revenue splits between services and distribution (“which have notably different margin profiles”) they do not know what drove the operator’s Q1 results. The bank gives its forecasts on future […]