Researchers at Quilty Analytics have carried out a running total of SpaceX’s fund-raising exercises and estimate that the Elon Musk-backed business has raised around $6 billion (€4.9bn) since the announcement of its – then proposed – Starlink broadband-by-satellite service in 2015. Quilty says its calculations show some $6.54 billion, not including debt financing and the […]
Elon Musk says download transmission rates on his mega-constellation of Starlink satellites will double to around 300 Mb/s later this year. Musk, in a Tweet, added that signal latency will also improve to around 20 milliseconds. He also said that Starlink coverage will reach subscribers around “most” of the planet by the end of this […]
The French communications regulator, ARCEP (l’Autorité de régulation des communications électroniques), has approved SpaceX’s Starlink broadband-by-satellite system for use and access to the nation. But the residents of a small village near Mont Saint-Michel abbey on the English Channel are saying a very firm “no”. The village, Saint-Senier-de-Beuvron, population 350, is fearful of the impact […]
Elon Musk’s broadband-by-satellite Starlink business is readying to open for business in Europe. The markets invited include France, Germany, Austria, Ireland, Italy and others. It plans to launch its service in these European markets in mid to late 2021 on a “first come, first served basis”. Its service will deliver broadband internet connexions at 50-150Mbps […]
SpaceX has wrapped a fundraising round of a reported $850 million (€704.4bn) to help pay for his new Starlink launches and development work on his Starship/Mars project. CNBC reports that the new cash was generated by the sale of shares at an impressive $419.99 per share and thus giving the privately held business a value […]
London-based speciality satellite operator Avanti Communications has borrowed another $30 million and been given an additional lifeline by its lenders for its $145 million-worth of borrowings. But the money comes with a sting in the tail. The lenders have granted an extension to the repayment obligations to Avanti, setting January 31st next year as the […]
Early on February 16th, SpaceX lifted another batch of 60 Starlink satellites from Launch pad 40 at Kennedy Space Center, but did not successfully land the booster rocket. The booster landed in the Atlantic close to its target barge some 400 miles northeast of Cape Canaveral. This was the first time since March 2020 that […]
Washington DC-based Omnispace is a relatively new name in the satellite industry. It says in its mission statement that it wants to “redefine mobile connectivity for the 21st century”. It has recently raised $60 million (€49.3m) in equity financing. Omnispace says it wants to build a global 5G hybrid mobile network. It has already booked […]
Cairo-based satellite operator Nilesat continues to suffer from squeezed margins leading to falling revenues and lower net profit. In its latest set of accounts, released to the Cairo stock exchange on February 11th, the operator’s net profit for 2020 tumbled 19.8 per cent (y-o-y) to $34.15 million, compared to $42.53 million in the previous year. […]
A report from investment bank Exane/BNPP says that today’s various satellite operators are supplying some 2,000 Gb/s of capacity (as at December 31st 2020 and using Northern Sky Research data). The bank suggests that this will grow ten-fold by the end of this year, and 30-fold before the end of this decade. This growth includes