The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) says it will shortly publish a “comprehensive” consultation paper on the licensing framework for satellite operators such as Elon Musk’s Starlink and Bharti’s OneWeb. The document will cover the setting up of Satellite Earth Station gateways, which are needed to route transmissions to and from the orbiting satellites. […]

Elon Musk announced last week that it would widen its sales efforts in the US for its Starlink broadband-by-satellite service. The news coincided with an updated valuation for SpaceX – the parent company for Starlink – of just over $100 billion. The valuation means that SpaceX is now the second-most valuable private company on the […]

Starlink India’s new country director, Sanjay Bhargava, says that Elon Musk’s broadband by satellite business is looking to sign up 200,000 subscribers by the end of next year. Bhargava explained in a Linkedin post on October 2nd that obtaining an operating licence over India was a complex operation and initially Starlink would be seeking approval […]

Eutelsat’s CEO Rodolphe Belmer, in a meeting with a French parliamentary committee, told delegates that the OneWeb satellite consortium is now a “European asset”, and that it was likely to be the only mega-constellation that is not owned by the US. Eutelsat has a 17.5 per cent investment stake in OneWeb with the British Government […]

Satellite broadband operator OneWeb, flush with $1 billion of insurance cover on its remaining 10 launches, is readying its business plans. The operator already has 322 satellites in orbit out of its full constellation target of 648 craft and the latest batch of 36 satellites are being prepared by Arianespace for launch next month having […]

A study from the Ohio State University and its ‘CARMEN’ project (Center for Automated Vehicles Research with Multimodal Assured Navigation) says that SpaceX’s Starlink broadband-by-satellite system could be used as an alternate supplier of a new global positioning system (GPS). The CARMEN findings, shared at the Institute of Navigation GNSS annual meeting in St. Louis, […]

Elon Musk’s broadband by satellite service Starlink will launch in Japan next year. Starlink has announced a partnership with Japan’s cellular operator KDDI to offer an urban mobile connectivity experience to its rural mobile customers from its 1200 remote cellular towers. KDDI and SpaceX say they will offer Starlink services to clients living in mountainous […]

SpaceX has launched 51 of its Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The launch happened at 11.55 pm (3.55am UTC on September 14th). The Version 1.5 satellites were launched into Polar orbits and have laser inter-satellite links. The Falcon 9 booster supporting this mission previously launched Telstar 18 Vantage, Iridium-8, and seven […]

It seems SpaceX’s Starlink service is gearing up to meet its outstanding demand and widen distribution of its broadband by satellite service. At last week’s Satellite 2021 show in Washington, SpaceX’s CFO Bret Johnsen told delegates that the company is currently losing money on each and every Starlink system it supplies and in particular on […]