This past weekend’s ILS/Proton rocket launch problems have placed Satmex, the next planned launch client, into an extremely dangerous position. Russia’s Proton Briz-M upper stage failed to reach its intended orbit, and placed its satellite into a lower orbit than intended. All planned further launches will now be subject to further delays. This will severely […]
Eutelsat’s massive 70B craft was successfully orbited from the floating Sea Launch platform overnight on December 3-4. The launch took place at 20.44 GMT on the 3rd. The huge 5.2 tonne satellite is to be placed at 70.5 degrees East. Eutelsat, in a statement, said the craft’s solar panels had been partly deployed some two […]
So, an academic study has suggested that the closure of Megaupload may have harmed legitimate box office takings for some movies. To some this kind of declaration is the media equivalent of being a climate change ‘denier’. I have said here before that the phalanx of content rights representation bodies – there are many of […]
One might say “at last”. On November 8th French media regulator le Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel (CSA) licensed Onde Numérique to broadcast by satellite over Europe. Transmissions will be made on the Eutelsat/SES Solaris Mobile payload that’s been in orbit on Eutelsat’s W2A craft since April 2009. The CSA announced a beauty contest competition for […]
There has been a consensus since the hapless George Entwistle was assisted onto his sword point a couple of weeks ago that the BBC should appoint an outsider as the new DG. All senior insiders were, to some extent or other, either tainted by the events that brought poor George down, or had no editorial […]
Billionaire Elon Musk, who co-founded PayPal, is creating a rival to the world’s established rocket-launch systems, France’s Arianespace and Russia’s Proton. His business is SpaceX and its Falcon rockets are proving to be a very real challenge to the status-quo. Musk has told the BBC that the Ariane 5 rocket system has “no chance” in […]
Iran, for some time a pariah nation, is finally suffering the reality of increasingly tough sanctions. In the past few weeks Eutelsat and Intelsat have taken down Iran’s state-backed channels, including those belonging to Press TV, its English-language propaganda station. Now Hong Kong-based AsiaSat has removed all Iranian TV and radio channels “in line with […]
EU’s foreign policy minister on has denounced Iran’s “deliberate jamming” of TV and radio satellite broadcasts that deprive its citizens of access to free information, and called on Tehran to obey global telecommunications laws. “Since 2009, repeated waves of jamming have affected the signals of European satellites in the Middle East,” the EU’s Catherine Ashton […]
Larry Gerbrandt in Los Angeles raises the spectre of the unwelcome return of relative valuation Like a bad horror movie franchise, some valuation concepts seem to keep coming back for another sequel in hopes that this time they’ve got it right. I’m talking about the biggest financial sink-hole ever created: ‘relative valuation’. The technique rose […]
France’s telecommunications agency is formally asking the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to take action on persistent satellite jamming by Iran. France’s National Agency of Frequency Regulation (ANFR) says it is “extremely concerned” about Iranian jamming, and reports suggest that discussions between France and other national bodies are discussing sanctions against Iran. In other news Iran […]