Focus: Telecom

The organizers of the annual Morocco Desert Challenge (MDC) rally raid have signed a three-year deal with Marlink for the provision of tracking and race management services based on the integrated Iritrack technology platform. Iritrack is a satellite-based tracking and security system providing two-way data and voice communications in a single device. It will be...

Iridium Communications announced the first Iridium Certus service providers for land-mobile applications, planned for commercial availability in mid-2018. This initial group of six service providers will play a pivotal role in bringing Iridium Certus to market, which will deliver global broadband connectivity and voice service to the land-mobile industry. The initial Iridium Certus service providers...

Smallsat mission specialist ISISpace announced that it will use Kubos’ Major Tom mission control software to operate satellites from its ground station in Delft, Netherlands. With this partnership, ISISpace will also become a reseller of the Major Tom software. According to Kubos, the new partnership will give customers an end-to-end solution for building and operating...

A year ago, we profiled the ambitions of Airborne Wireless Network (AWN), which has a goal of using airborne aircraft as signal repeaters that are capable of generating wireless internet signals. Throughout 2017, AWN achieved several milestones, including forming a partnership with Mynaric (formerly ViaLight Communications) to develop, design, test and manufacture a customized hybrid synchronized laser-based communication...

At this week’s Singapore Airshow, GomSpace, the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS), and Singapore Technologies Electronics (ST Electronics) signed a research collaboration agreement to conduct a design study on space-based Very High Frequency (VHF) communications for Air Traffic Management (ATM) in the Singapore Flight Information Region (FIR). This agreement follows the signing of a Memorandum of...

NBN Co and Speedcast have selected Gilat Satellite Network’s satellite platform for its Business and Enterprise Satellite Service (BESS) for businesses in Australia. The BESS network solution will use the NBN Sky Muster Ka-band multi-beam satellites. Gilat technology is part of Speedcast’s managed service offering to NBN, responsible for the supply, configuration and specialist operational...

Panasonic Avionics completed a major network upgrade in January that will allow its airline customers to take better advantage of its sprawling High Throughput Satellite (HTS) capacity. The upgrade will increase the data rates available to airplanes by at least 20 times, according to the company’s senior director of global capacity planning Todd Hill. Hill...

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) has signed a 25 million euro ($31 million) contract in Beijing with Twenty First Century Aerospace Technology (21AT) to provide data from a new Earth Observation (EO) satellite (SSTL S1). The satellite is due for launch on a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) in the middle of this year. As...

Avanti Communications has agreed to form a partnership with Global Partnership for Education (GPE), an international organization that ensures children across developing countries have access to quality education, to deliver satellite broadband via its new high throughput Ka-band satellite, Hylas 4, to 1,000 rural schools across Africa. Through Hylas 4, which Arianespace will launch in...

It’s no secret that the satellite industry is in the midst of a major renaissance, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the birth of the industry 60 years ago. In this op-ed, satellite vet Lisa Dreher (Kymeta) breaks down how satellite technology is poised to revolutionize the way we communicate across the globe....