Ahead of the ministerial meeting due November 22nd-23rd, an agreement was reached between the EU Parliament, European Space Agency and EU member states to invest €2.4 billion ($2.48bn) in the proposed IRIS² low Earth orbiting broadband and sat-nav scheme. The IRIS² (Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite) project will build and operate an […]
The launch of Eutelsat’s 10B satellite by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral on November 21st was called off. Reports suggest it was for technical reasons. A SpaceX statement said: “Standing down from tonight’s launch of the Eutelsat 10B mission to allow for additional pre-flight checkouts; now targeting tomorrow, November 22 at 9:57 […]
ArianeGroup has ordered its next batch of rockets with components from Airbus for 14 new Ariane 6 rockets. The contract includes the manufacturing and supply of innovative, large, lightweight structures for the next fourteen Ariane 6 launchers, to be manufactured from now until 2025. The contract will support ArianeGroup’s ramp up to full production rate […]
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) says it needs more time for consultation ahead of any approvals to operational requests from Starlink, OneWeb and Jio Satellite and to licence their broadband activity in India. TRAI is reportedly going to take until the New Year before it issues a consultation paper which will outline its […]
On November 17th the EU and European Commission issued their political approval for investment in a €6 billion proposal for a fleet of up to 170 low Earth orbiting satellites for broadband system (IRIS²) serving Europe and beyond. SES has issued a supportive statement even though it might have to contribute its portion of a […]
Cellular telco Rakuten Mobile has obtained preliminary experimental test station licences to conduct mobile communication tests and preliminary verification in Japan using AST SpaceMobile’s low earth orbit satellite, BlueWalker 3. AST SpaceMobile is building the first and only space-based cellular broadband network accessible directly by standard unmodified mobile phones. In the future, Rakuten Mobile aims […]
A planned November 17th SpaceX launch of 52 Starlink satellites (Mission 2-4) from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California was scrubbed because of a glitch in a static test firing of the rocket’s booster. The launch of a Eutelsat (10B) will happen on November 21st (9.57pm Florida time). The cancelled Starlink launch would have […]
The EU has given the go-ahead for an independent European Low Earth Orbiting fleet of broadband and satellite navigation craft. The name for the project is IRIS2. An EU ministerial conference approved the spend of €6 billion Internet system in order to ensure Europe’s security by reducing its reliance on foreign – that is non-European […]
OneWeb has announced a distribution partner agreement with Q-KON Africa, a specialist technology company that supplies solutions based on satellite, wireless and VoIP technologies, to offer broadband connectivity services in African countries. Q-KON Africa connects ‘off-grid’ locations through their satellite broadband service, Twoobii, to core networks throughout Africa reliably and effectively. The OneWeb LEO satellite […]
The deployment of satellite constellations in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) for low-latency and high throughput network applications and extending terrestrial network (TN) coverage have become significant drivers in the adoption of satellite services in the global telecommunications sector, notes technology intelligence firm ABI Research who forecasts that this adoption will culminate in $141 billion (€135.7bn) […]