HISPASAT, the Spanish satellite telecommunications operator of the Red Eléctrica Group, has delivered two pilot tele-education and telemedicine projects via satellite to the Ecuadorian government to help bridge the digital divide in remote areas of the country.

As I began writing this column news was filtering over media about the decision of the World Health Organization to designate the latest mutations to the spike protein of the Sars-Cov-2 virus as a “variant of concern”, and to use the Greek letter Omicron to name it (rather than the original designation of B.1.1.529). Thanks to the skills of scientists at South Africa’s Medical Research Council Genomics Centre the exact sequencing of the new variant was speedily completed and its details promulgated quickly to their colleagues in sister agencies around the world.

Satellite Markets and Research are media partners for the following events where we will be participating as either exhibitors, speakers or session moderators. To book a meeting with Satellite Markets and Research in any of the shows below, e-mail: virgil@satellitemarkets.com 

2022 Events

SATELLITE 2022, Washington D.C., USA  March 21-24, 2022

Comtech Telecommunications Corp.  announced today, that during its first quarter of fiscal 2022, it was awarded a follow-on order valued at US$ 1.2 million for its Ka-band Solid-State Power Amplifiers (SSPAs) that use state-of-the-art Gallium Nitride (GaN) technology for an In-Flight Connectivity (“IFC”) application. Comtech’s Falcon 50Ka GaN amplifiers feature a tri-band Block Upconverter (BUC) and are packaged in ARINC 791 compliant housings.

Rocket Lab acquires space hardware company Planetary Systems Corporation (“PSC”).  Crux CFO Advisors was the exclusive financial advisor in the transacation.

According toABI Research, the serviceable addressable market (SAM) for global satellite broadband over geostationary (GEO), medium earth orbit (MEO), and low earth orbit (LEO) satellites will stand at 330 million premises, equivalent to 1.3 billion household members in 2026.

New data from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies (ICTs), ​​​​showed that an estimated 37 per cent of the world's population – or 2.9 billion people – have still never used the Internet.

The participants of NATSATTEL 2021 online conference had plenty of topics on their agenda: transformation of satellite communications industry, convergence with 5G, LEO broadband constellations, software-defined space and ground segments, new challenges and new urgent tasks, sustainability, space debris issues, broadening digital inclusion, and much more. The event was organized by the Intersputnik International Organization of Space Communications, as an integral part of Organization’s 50th anniversary celebrations.

Technical paper and panel proposals are now being accepted for the Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology (BEIT) track of the NAB Show Conference, held at the