Advanced Television

Inside Satellite

Chris Forrester

Chris Forrester is one of the most experienced and highly regarded journalists in the field. His insight and analysis, particularly in the satellite and pay-TV arena, is highly prized. He has written for all the major business journals in the sector as well as several national newspapers.

Starlink “transformative” in shipping

Pacôme Révillon, CEO of Novaspace (the name of the merged Euroconsult and SpaceTec) says that SpaceX’s Starlink broadband by satellite system has been “transformative” in terms of its maritime customers. Speaking to Constellations, Révillon said that shipping is a highly complex environment, not least because of the variety of rules and obligations and just like […]

July 5, 2024

Rivada Networks funding explained

Rivada Space Networks has secured a major slice of the cash needed to build and launch its mega-constellation of an initial 300 satellites. German newspaper Handelsblatt reports that Rivada has collected €10 billion in pre-order commitments from 113 “potential customers”. The report adds that it has also attracted investment cash from 70 investors including a […]

July 4, 2024

EU satellites disrupted by Russia

The Russian Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad has been pinpointed as being one source of numerous interferences on European satellites owned by SES, Eutelsat and others. The United Nations agency that oversees communications technology ha said that Russia should “immediately cease any deliberate action to cause harmful interference to frequency assignments of other administrations,” in a […]

July 3, 2024

AST SpaceMobile CEO gives business update

Abel Avellan, Founder, Chairman and CEO of AST SpaceMobile has written to partners, shareholders and even “future space-based cellular broadband network users” with an update on where the business is, especially following on the recent commitment by Verizon, which has joined AT&T in backing the company. Avellan describes Verizon and AT&T as the US industry […]

July 2, 2024

Arianespace loses key launch order

July 9th is the scheduled launch date for the much-delayed test flight European Space Agency’s (ESA) Ariane 6 rocket. However, last week saw Europe’s important weather organisation cancel its launch contract on an Ariane 6 flight. Worse, perhaps, the cancellation was made in favour of Arianespace’s arch-rival SpaceX. Eumetsat, in a June 28th statement, said […]

July 1, 2024

Intelsat confirms another space tug rescue mission

Intelsat has signed a contract with Starfish Space for a geostationary satellite space tug servicing mission which will take place in 2026. Starfish Space’s ‘Otter’ rescue satellite will attach itself to an already retired Intelsat craft to validate that the system can work. This test linkage will be followed by another rescue mission for an […]

June 28, 2024

AT&T firmly backs AST SpaceMobile

US telco giant AT&T is already a financial backer of AST SpaceMobile (and has guaranteed a $20 million revenue commitment). AST plans on circling the globe with its ‘direct-to-cellular’ satellite service. Unconfirmed reports suggest that AT&T expects some 30-40 per cent of its US clients to take a low-cost add-on service for connection to AST […]

June 27, 2024

Ariane 6’s wet dress rehearsal

The launch of the European Space Agency’s all-new Ariane 6 rocket gets ever-closer. Last week technicians at ESA’s Kourou, French Guiana spaceport completed a full ‘wet’ dress rehearsal of the rocket which was fully fuelled. The rocket took on about 180 metric tonnes of propellant and all was subsequently drained following the tests which included […]

June 26, 2024

Bank forecasts 56m subs for AST SpaceMobile

Deutsche Bank has delivered a favourable report on the prospects for would-be satellite-to-cellular operator AST SpaceMobile. The bank forecasts that by the end of 2006 it estimates AST will have more than 56 million subscribers to its satellite-to-cellular 5G system. Currently, AST has only a single satellite in orbit (its BlueWalker 3 test craft) but […]

June 25, 2024

Terran Orbital in ‘non-compliance’ with NYSE

Boca Raton-based satellite builder, Terran Orbital, has received formal notification from the New York Stock Exchange that the company was in ‘non-compliance’ with its rules. The NYSE rules are that shares must stay above $1 in value. Terran’s share price is currently just 74 cents and for the past month it has been below $1. […]

June 24, 2024