Advanced Television

AMOS wins $63m Israeli contract

July 11, 2016

By Chris Forrester

The State of Israel has signed an agreement with Spacecom which owns the AMOS fleet of satellites, for the purchase of communications services on the company’s satellites for five years.

The contract is worth $63 million (€57m). The state also purchased an option to extend the contract for a further eight-year period, If the option is exercised, the contract will be worth a total of $164 million to Spacecom.

Spacecom was founded in 1995 and is based in Ramat Gan, Israel.

The contract win is good news for Spacecom, itself up for sale. At the end of last year it had to declare its then brand new satellite Amos-5 as a total loss.

Shaul Elovitch’s Eurocom Group, which holds a 64.5 percent stake in the company, informed the Tel Aviv stock exchange in December 2015 that it was seeking a sale of the business. In October 2015 Eutelsat signed a contract with Spacecom to lease the Ka-band on its upcoming AMOS-6 satellite in order to supply Facebook with capacity.

Amos-6 is due for launch in mid-August by a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket from Cape Canaveral.

Categories: Articles, DTH/Satellite