Focus: Telecom

NFL fans in Washington and Miami are getting their games on more than ever through a pilot program between Kangaroo TV and DirecTV. Using Kangaroo TV’s handheld unit with a 4-by-3 inch screen, visitors to the Washington Redskins’ Fedex Field or Miami Dolphins’ Dolphins Field can watch any game available on DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket...

Microsoft Corp. and Hughes announced Sept. 28 a plan to roll out 5,000 broadband-enabled kiosks across India. The two companies plan to deploy information and communications-technology kiosks in an estimated 200 small towns and rural regions throughout the country to provide budding entrepreneurs the ability to utilize e-commerce, education and e-governance services. The project is...

The competition for satellite pay-TV operators is getting more intense around the globe, with traditional rival cable now joined by a growing number of telcos eager to gain a slice of the lucrative pay-TV market. While some direct-to-home (DTH) satellite operators have formed partnerships with telcos, the reality is telcos look to be strong competition...

The satellite manufacturing landscape remains a tough place to do business, with a host of manufacturers still competing for relatively few orders. Despite the intense competition, EADS Astrium remains one of the major players on the European satellite landscape, winning some high-profile manufacturing contracts in 2006. In June, EADS Astrium signed a contract with Middle...

By Nick Mitsis Even though The Boeing Company decided to shut down its high-speed broadband communications offering, Connexion by Boeing, in August, the move may have been one of the company’s strongest. Closing departments, services or business plans is always challenging and rarely viewed as a positive in the eyes of the industry, but when...

By Gerry Oberst In the last days of August, the European Commission released a series of studies it requested from outside experts to help prepare a review of the European electronic communications regulatory structure. These studies give close to 700 pages of analysis of various aspects of the European communications sector. One of the studies,...

By Peter Brown More than 800 emergency response and technical support personnel along with two dozen or so satellite-equipped vehicles descended on San Diego in late August for the Strong Angel 3 demonstration at the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department training facility. Strong Angel 3 communications director Brian Steckler, a faculty member at the Naval Postgraduate...

Systems By Greg Berlocher Since their inception, network management systems have made the metamorphic change from basic monitoring aids to feature-rich management tools. Built on powerful and robust computing platforms, today’s network management systems now can deliver a host of valuable services to corporations, carriers and governments, and the term management system no longer is...

The impending merger of France’s two satellite-TV providers — Canalsat and TPS — has raised the question about which fixed satellite services (FSS) company will inherit the combined companies’ business, along with other marketing and technology issues that the surviving operator will have to address. In December, Vivendi Universal, owner of Canal+ Group, and TF1...

After a few frustrating years of slow launch rates due to a depressed commercial launch market as well as satellite manufacturing delays, Sea Launch is on target to perform six missions in 2006, a single-year record for the commercial provider. The previous high for Sea Launch, which lofts satellites into orbit aboard the Zenit-3SL rocket...