AsiaSat of Hong Kong is ordering its 9th communications satellite, and bizarrely it might even carry a weather sensor to the craft’s payload. Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) gets the order that will have Ku, Ka and C-Band transponders for the $164 million satellite that will eventually replace AsiaSat-4 in mid-2016. The weather portion of the satellite […]
DirecTV, the DTH pay-TV broadcaster says it is preparing to show all of the upcoming FIFA World games in HD on 5 dedicated channels over its Latin American markets. DirecTV’s president of DirecTV Panamericana, Jacopo Bracco, told analysts at DirecTV’s Investor Day in New York that HDTV was increasingly important to Latino subscribers. He said […]
Arianespace has ordered 18 extra giant Ariane ECA launch rockets from Astrium-EADS. These are extra to the 35 rockets ordered back in 2009. Deliveries of the new order, worth more than €2 billion, are scheduled to commence in 2017. The new rockets will be used to launch to orbit geostationary satellites and European Space Agency […]
Qatar’s first satellite, Es’Hail-1, was launched in August as a joint-venture with Eutelsat. Now the company’s chief strategy officer says the nation’s second craft will launch by 2016. Es’Hail is issuing a Request For Proposals (RFP) in order place a contract in Q2/2014, according to reports from Qatar. Es’Hail-2 would be smaller than Es’Hail-1, weighing […]
Mexico will auction off frequencies at two satellite orbital positions that it controls. Mexico’s Secretariat of Communications and Transportation said it would award licences in Ku-band and C-Band, and it was now determining how the bidding processes might be managed. The two orbital positions are highly valuable, and are at 113 and 116.8 degrees West, […]
DirecTV Chief Executive Officer Mike White has confirmed that the satellite TV operator is developing an Internet product that it plans to market separately from DTH programming service. Speaking on the sidelines of the company’s investor day, he suggested that any such service would likely have fewer channels than customers are used to seeing in […]
The satellite industry has been concerned over the past year or two by the threat of over-supply of capacity. The African continent is one case in point where satellite bandwidth prices are sluggish indicating a surplus of competition not only from an assortment of satellite providers but by the growing links provided by fibre. A […]
Eutelsat SA has raised €930 million by way of a 6-year Eurobond issue that’s due for repayment in 2020, paying 2.625 per cent interest per annum. Reportedly the transaction was well received by the market and was significantly over-subscribed (to the tune of €4 billion) despite last week’s debt rating nervousness. The cash enables Eutelsat […]
The BBC is to launch five new subscription-free HD channels on December 10th. The new channels: BBC Three HD, BBC Four HD, BBC News HD, CBeebies HD and CBBC HD will be available on Freeview HD, Freesat HD, YouView, Sky HD and Virgin Media. Viewers will also be able to catch-up on HD programmes from […]
Inmarsat has confirmed the successful launch of its first Global Xpress (GX) satellite (Inmarsat-5 F1) on board a Proton Breeze M rocket launched in Kazakhstan on December 8th. Over the coming two weeks, the Inmarsat controllers will command the satellite to perform seven chemical burns to raise Inmarsat-5 F1 to a geo-synchronous elliptical orbit, while […]