Focus: Telecom

Although Hurricane Harvey surprised everyone — including meteorologists — with unprecedented rainfall, the disaster has exemplified a marked improvement in the resiliency of emergency communications. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which has published an ongoing update of cell tower outages, reported just 4.7 percent of the cell sites in Harvey’s path have been affected. Read...

With 5G set to arrive within the next five years, accounting for as many as 1.1 billion connections by 2025, the telecoms industry has a lot of work to do in keeping up with the 5G overhaul. The industry has yet to fully implement a working and reliable 4G experience for users, which begs the...

Speedcast International and Danaos Peripherals announced a strategic alliance agreement under which the two companies will combine maritime communications with advanced application management developed by Danaos. Within 2017, the two companies will jointly release a remote and autonomous IT system on board a vessel, leveraging technologies such as Big Data analytics, Internet of Things (IoT)...

EchoStar has successfully completed the in-orbit testing of the recently launched EchoStar 21 satellite. The company has also completed the handover of the satellite from manufacturer Space Systems Loral (SSL) to EchoStar’s satellite operations team, which manages flight operations via EchoStar 21’s primary satellite Earth station located in Griesheim, Germany and a secondary station in...

The advent of new High Throughput Satellites (HTS) will add to the swell of LEO and MEO bandwidth supply. As capacity will likely reach unprecedented levels, can the industry expect a surplus? And would this render bandwidth management less vital? Market players break down the demands and trends, revealing that bandwidth management solutions will see...

SES has announced a change of launch vehicles and launch slots for its SES 12 and SES 14 satellites. Originally, SES had tasked SpaceX to launch SES 14 on an unclear launch date in Q1 2018. However, to mitigate revenue losses from the failure of two satellites earlier this year, SES has now tasked Arianespace...

For the first time, researchers have sent a quantum-secured message containing more than one bit of information per photon through the air above a city. The demonstration showed that it could one day be practical to use high-capacity, free-space quantum communication to create a highly secure link between ground-based networks and satellites, a requirement for...

Intelsat announced that the company’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Stephen Spengler, has been named a commissioner of the United Nations Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development. The Broadband Commission, jointly managed by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) engages in high-level advocacy to promote broadband in developing...

President Trump announced this week that additional American troops will join the more than 8,000 already stationed in Afghanistan, further extending the longest war in U.S. history at nearly 16 years. During that time, Afghanistan has worked to modernize its use of satellites for telecommunications and other services. In this interview with Amirzai Sangin, Afghanistan’s...

Globecomm has installed a complete communications solution on MV Baltic, the latest newbuild to join the Global Seatrade fleet. Globecomm delivered its Ku-band Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) solution with Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services, an Iridium Pilot L-Band system and KNS S8 antenna to enable flat-fee internet access and live TV services onboard...