Advanced Television

Viasat

Viasat borrows $400m

California-based Viasat has some inevitable anxieties about the current Covid-19 pandemic and the impact it is having on its aircraft-based In-Flight Communications and Entertainment revenues. It is borrowing $400 million (via Senior Unsecured Notes due 2028) in a private placing. Viasat says it intends to use the net proceeds from the offering to repay all […]

June 18, 2020By Chris Forrester

FCC approves LEO operators to bid for rural funding

The FCC, somewhat unusually, seems to have changed its mind and it is the world’s operators of Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) satellites which could benefit. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said on June 9th that the Commission had changed the text on its draft order. “We did accommodate a request from a commissioner (Commissioner O’Rielly) to […]

June 11, 2020By Chris Forrester

SES plans major fleet expansion

SES currently has two core deployments of satellites: It has a fleet of powerful geostationary satellites that just about serves the whole planet. It also has 20 O3b (‘the Other 3 Billion’) satellites in Medium Earth Orbit, with seven new ‘super-power’ O3b satellites on order from Boeing, with deployment starting in 2021. The O3b fleet […]

June 1, 2020By Chris Forrester