Focus: Telecom

Sensing market opportunities in Africa, China Exim Bank and manufacturer China Great Wall have agreed to pay $550 million to procure two new satellites for Nigeria. The contract comes after Nigeria renegotiated an earlier deal which required it to front 15 percent of the satellites’ cost — now, the country isn’t paying anything for it....

Maxar Technologies announced the appointment of Mike Greenley to serve as group president of MDA. Reporting to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Maxar, Howard Lance, Greenley assumes responsibility for taking MDA to the next level of growth and profitability. His responsibilities will include all of the MDA lines of business and its 1,900 employees. Primary locations...

In just over a week’s time, the satellite industry will convene for one of the year’s first major trade shows – CABSAT. The Middle East and Africa remains a great region for satellite communications in many verticals. One of the region’s key players is undoubtedly Yahsat, a relatively new satellite operator that has made a...

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has awarded ViaSat a contract to upgrade its Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) satellite communications control stations to comply with the Integrated Waveform (IW) baseline. The upgrade gives NATO greater communications interoperability, scalability and flexibility across legacy and next-generation platforms to enhance situational awareness as the battlespace expands. As part of...

Airborne Wireless Network (AWN) announced that on Dec. 26, 2017, it entered into a service agreement with Intellicom Technologies to support the development and advancement ABWN’s Infinitus Super Highway. ABWN has been working closely with Intellicom since February 2017 to design and implement its proprietary technology underlying AWN’s Infinitus Super Highway. Intellicom assisted in the successful May 2017 proof-of-flight concept...

In a recent update on its ongoing corporate initiatives, UrtheCast stated it has entered into an agreement with an institutional investor for $175 million in financing for the company’s UrtheDaily constellation. UrtheCast is currently working closely with the investor to finalize closing documentation, with a target completion date for the financing extended to the end...

RSC Energia announced Friday that it successfully restored its communications link with the AngoSat 1 spacecraft. Energia lost contact with the satellite shortly after its launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Dec. 26. In a press release, RSC Energia — AngoSat 1’s manufacturer — stated that its specialists received telemetric information from the satellite...

Iridium Communications announced that the fourth set of 10 Iridium Next satellites, launched Dec. 22 by SpaceX, are functioning nominally and have begun the testing and validation process. Not only did this fourth launch mark the midway point of the Iridium Next launch campaign, it is also the first Next launch to use a flight-proven...

Russia promptly lost contact with Angola’s first telecommunications satellite after launching it from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Dec. 26. This comes just weeks after a similar incident in November, when Russia lost contact with a weather satellite it launched from a new complex in Vostochny. The question now is: do these subsequent failures...

According to analysts at PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC), cost reduction targets are driving more Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) in aerospace than ever before. 2017 also marked some of the largest transactions on record, as major corporations consolidated to improve their operational efficiency margins and pursue new markets and technologies. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the...