News Analysis

by Lou Zacharilla

New York City, April 1, 2019--In much of the world spring is a season with a nice big payload of rituals, customs and a whiff of hope.  Easter, Passover and Ramadan, on the religious side, occur before summer’s sun blares at us.  Among my favorite rituals is “Hanami,” the ancient Japanese tradition of viewing cherry blossoms (sakura).  I go to Brooklyn’s Botanical Gardens for this (not Japan.) But the sakura (cherry blossoms) are really nice in a part of New York not necessarily linked to delicacy.

by Hub Urlings

Amsterdam, The Netherlands,  April 1, 2019--After the launch of a whole new generation of small Sat-IoT systems at the end of 2018, the market is looking forward on how these networks are going to fulfill their promise of global low-cost IoT connectivity services. The significant decrease of the overall global IoT connectivity costs and power requirements these new generation Sat-IoT networks bring is expected to lead to a market expansion that will at least equal to the magnitude of this reduction at a factor 25. Expectations, however, are that the market for Sat-IoT may expand way beyond that leading to tens of millions of nodes around the world.

by Elisabeth Tweedie

Los Angeles, Calif., April 1, 2019--In an article for this publication exactly a year ago, I suggested that maybe it was time for us to start thinking of ourselves as the bandwidth industry, rather than the satellite industry. Now, I’m not vain enough to think that that remark was what prompted DirecTV to announce at the end of last year that it would not be ordering any more satellites, and that it would instead concentrate on building out fiber and OTT offerings for its customers.

Singapore, March 27, 2019 — Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd today announced that its subsidiary, Singapore Technologies Engineering (Europe) Ltd, has entered into a conditional share purchase agreement to acquire a 100% ownership in Newtec Group NV, an established Belgium-based company in the satellite communications industry.

Ottawa, Canada, March 26, 2019 —  C-COM Satellite Systems Inc. (TSXV: CMI) announced today it generated revenues of US$10.1 million (Ca$13,527,368) and a net after tax profit of US$1.72 million (Ca$2,299,501) or US 4.48 cents (6 Ca. cents per share). This compared with revenues of US$7.68 (Ca$10,282,319) and a net after tax profit of US$0.77 million (Ca$1,035,744) or US 2.24 cents (Ca. 3 cents per share) as reported in 2017, representing an increase of 31.6% and 122.0% respectively.

London, UK, March 25, 2019 — The boards of Inmarsat and Triton Bidco announced today that they have reached agreement for a US$3.4 billion in cash takeover by Triton Bidco of Inmarsat.

Madrid, Spain, March 12, 2019 – Vertice 360, the Spanish media company owned by Squirrel Capital, is set to acquire M-Three Satcom, the Italian based teleport operator founded in 2004 and acquired by Giglio Group in 2015.

by Andrew Faiola

Communications are undergoing a complete transition from what we know as the norm, towards a somewhat unknown reality, where anything and everything will eventually be connected. Of course, this is no easy feat for established networks built on fixed, tried and tested infrastructure and as new applications such as the Internet of Things (IoT), continues to advance and connected objects become commonplace, universal high-capacity, high-speed connectivity will become a necessity, anywhere and everywhere. Consequently, the role of satellite will play a growing role, delivering seamless, high-bandwidth broadband services to once unimaginable locations, including out at sea and in the sky.

by Robert Bell

New York City, NY, March 4, 2019--Once upon a time, a large teleport operator was hit by a major power outage.  Uninterruptible power supplies immediately kicked in and the NOC staff waited for the generator to start.  Nothing happened.  So, they switched to the backup generator.  Still nothing.  Work crews rushed to trouble-shoot the generator failures while the countdown timer on the UPS batteries ticked downward…and downward…and still downward.  Just minutes from total loss of power, the work crews got one of the generators started and customers suffered no loss of service.  
That did not stop the operator for buying two more generators to serve as triple and quadruple backups. 

by Bernardo Schneiderman

Los Angeles, Calif., March 4, 2019--Since 2016, the FCC had approved satellite constellations for new Non-geostationary Orbit (NGSO) Systems and the latest ones given green light were Spacex, Telesat, Keppler, and Leosat in November 2018 authorizing nearly 8,000 small telecom satellites to serve U.S. entities from Low Earth Orbit allowing global coverage.