People

Convergent Media Systems Names CEO

Convergent Media Systems, a provider of digital media platforms, announced that President and Chief Operating Officer Bryan Allen has been promoted to the position of President and Chief Executive Officer. Murray Holland, who has been at the helm for the past 12 years, steps down as CEO but continues on as Chairman of the board. In Allen’s position as President and COO, he led the Convergent executive team to create new products, services and markets.

Allen has been with Convergent for more than 23 years. Starting as a systems engineer, Allen rose through the ranks and was promoted to a number of executive positions within the company, from Vice President of Engineering all the way to COO, President and COO, and today CEO.

Allen’s leadership resulted in Convergent receiving the inaugural Business Ethics Award of Georgia in 2001. He was also nominated twice for "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Ernst & Young, in 2000 and 2001.

Euro1080 Appoints New Strategic Advisor

Euro1080, the European HDTV media company, announced that Jean Stock is joining the company as strategic advisor. Euro1080 has been one of the pioneers of HDTV in Europe. Its HD1 channel can be viewed on various satellite platforms throughout Europe.

Stock was previously Secretary General of the EBU-UER, the European Broadcasting Union, a post he held for three years between 2001 and 2004.

FCC Names Chairman

President George W. Bush on March 16 officially named Kevin Martin the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Martin, currently a commissioner, will replace the departing Michael Powell.

This method of naming a current commissioner to lead the regulatory agency precludes any drawn-out Senate nomination hearings, but it does leave the panel one member short, which could be sticky if a tiebreaker is needed. In addition, Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy will be stepping down, meaning there will be two new partisan positions to fill.

RSCC Appoints General Director Deputy

Igor V. Zabolotny was appointed to the RSCC’s General Director Deputy. He will head the marketing service of RSCC. This line of business has being established on the basis of the commercial service departments and

organized as an independent service at RSCC.

From 1997 to 1999, Zabolotny worked as the Executive Director for JSC Rostelecom; and from 1999 to 2002 as the Executive Director for JSC Svyazinvest were he dealt with marketing and sales issues. From 2002 to 2004 he worked as the General Director for the JSC Dalsvyaz.

Zabolotny is a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Telecommunications and Informatics, an Academician of the International Academy of the Telecommunications Quality. He is a member of the Board of Directors of JSC Dalsvyaz public corporation and JSC Acos as well.

SES Americom Names New President And CEO

SES Americom announced that its board of directors appointed Edward Horowitz to be the president and CEO of the company. He also will serve on the executive committee of SES Global.

Horowitz most recently founded EdsLink LLC, a venture fund providing strategic financing, operational and technology consulting services. Prior to forming EdsLink, Horowitz served as executive vice president for advanced development of Citigroup and founder and chairman of e-Citi. On the satellite side, he served as strategic advisor to the CEO of Cablevision’s Rainbow DBS satellite service division. Horowitz in his career also served as senior vice president of Viacom Inc. and chairman and CEO of Viacom Interactive Media.

Contracts

Americom Tapped For Satellite Network

Americom Government Services said it won a five-year contract from the United States, Caribbean States/Territories and Central American Organization of Air Navigation Services that are coordinated by the regional office for the North American, Central American and Caribbean Office of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to provide a satellite-based telecommunications network to support the MEVA 2 project. The network will close existing coverage gaps and provide aeronautical ground-ground digital communications between regional air traffic control centers. The United Nations created ICAO in 1944 to promote the safe and orderly development of international civil aviation and works closely with the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States. The MEVA 2 project will allow for the integration of air controller voice and data traffic and will greatly enhance the "hands-off" of flights from air controller to air controller.

Artel Contracts With U.S. Central Command

Artel Inc., a provider of information technology and managed network services, said the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency awarded it a task order to provide satellite service to the U.S. Central Command in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The award is valued at $3.7 million for the one-year base period and is worth, if all options are exercised, more than $12.5 million. The terms of the order call for Artel to furnish the U.S. Central Command with 224 MHz of bandwidth from Intelsat’s IS-706 satellite. Half of the bandwidth will support TDMA service in-theater, with the remaining capacity to be used to provide single channel per carrier services.

AsiaSat Signs Pakistani Channel Deal

Asiasat signed a C-band capacity deal for capacity on Asiasat 3S to broadcast Pakistan’s premier channel, AAJ TV, on all local networks in Pakistan and its overseas audience across Asia. AAJ TV will start broadcasting March 23on Asiasat 3S. The channel offers a mix of news, current affairs and entertainment programming in Urdu and English to local audiences, as well as Pakistani communities throughout Asia and the Middle East.

Aster Images Tapped For Satellite Imagery

Ekwan-X, a Toronto-based mineral exploration company, said it entered into an agreement to purchase 100,000 square kilometers of satellite images from Aster Images Inc. The images cover a vast area of southwest Nevada stretching from Las Vegas to Reno. The imagery comes from the Aster satellite, which is operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the government of Japan. Ekwan-X said it would use the images to identify potential mineralized targets. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Ball Aerospace To Build Climate And Weather Mission Instrument

Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. said it was selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center to build the Global Precipitation Measurement-Microwave Imager (GMI) in support of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. The mission is a joint effort with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and other partners to build a constellation of spacecraft to improve climate and weather predictions through more accurate and frequent precipitation measurements. NASA will manage the mission. GMI will be integrated onto the GPM core spacecraft together with JAXA’s dual-frequency Precipitation Radar. When operational, they will make radiometric and radar measurements of precipitation. Financial terms of the contract were not disclosed.

CapRock Unites With RST For New MSS

CapRock Communications said it signed an alliance agreement with Robotic Satellite Technology Solutions (RST) for the distribution of a new automatically deployable satellite system for mobile communications vehicles. CapRock will have global distribution rights for the new auto-deploy antenna in the energy exploration and production market and will be a preferred distributor of other remote markets. The alliance comes after a co-development effort that combined the product engineering talents of RST with CapRock’s experience delivering broadband satellite services to remote locations and extreme environments. Financial terms of the alliance were not disclosed.

EMS To Deliver RF Control Hardware

EMS Technologies Inc. said its Defense and Space Systems division will deliver hardware for two next-generation Ka-band satellites that Boeing will build for DirecTV Inc. The satellites, slated for launch in 2007, will enable DirecTV to deliver more than 1,000 high definition (HD) local channels and 150 national HD channels and other advanced programming to consumers. The satellites’ multiple high-power amplifiers will depend on EMS’s technology for two functions. On the input side, EMS will supply the amplitude and phase adjustment networks. On the output side, EMS technology will provide the isolated combining networks for the high-power TWTA outputs.

New Skies Secures Latin American Broadband Contract

New Skies Satellites BV has reached a long-term agreement with Latin American broadband service provider Impsat in Argentina to support a new two-way broadband Internet network using the NSS-7 satellite.

Impsat has deployed a new IP hub at its teleport facility in Buenos Aires to launch two-way broadband Internet, voice-over-IP (VoIP) and virtual private network (VPN) services throughout Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia and Brazil.

SAIC Taps Eagle Broadband For Satellite Communications Technology

Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) and Eagle Broadband Inc. won a contract from the U.S. Air Force for Eagle’s Satellite Media Access Extender (SatMAX) non-line-of-sight satellite communications technology, which was shipped for immediate deployment at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois as we went to press. Scott AFB plans to use Eagle’s SatMAX technology to provide voice and data communications via the Iridium satellite network in non-line-of-sight environments, allowing multiple officers and personnel to use their Iridium phones from within a critical control center. Financial terms of the contract award were not disclosed.

SES Astra Inks Astra 4A Deal

SES Astra signed a two-transponder deal with SkyVision, an operator looking to deliver satellite Internet services in Africa. SkyVision is the first customer on Astra 4A. Astra 4A is a 33-transponder payload that resides on the Americom-12 (AMC-12) satellite, which was launched in February. It has been optimized for C-band coverage of the African continent. SkyVision is looking to expand Internet connectivity services over Africa, and in particular over the entire central African region and the length of western Africa, including South Africa.

Viasat Signs Contract For Broadband Satellite System

Viasat said it finalized a contract to supply its SurfBeam broadband satellite networking system to Smart Digital Communications Bhd in Malaysia. Smart will use the system, the first of its kind in Asia, to provide enhanced satellite managed services and networking operations for a new service called Triple Play that will bring voice, video and high-speed Internet to homes and small businesses in the country. Under the contract, valued at more than $5.75 million, Viasat will supply 5,000 Ku-band satellite terminals for the project. Installations of the terminals are expected to be completed by the end of this year.

WSI Corp. To Provide Sirius With Marine Weather Data

Sirius Satellite Radio said WSI Corp. would provide it with a full suite of marine weather content for a new service expected to launch later this year. Sirius plans to create a special marine weather service that will include a variety of graphical and text information, including water surface temperatures, lightning strikes, coast-to-coast United States and Canadian weather radar, storm tracking, winds and wave heights. Sirius said it plans to introduce a new data receiver for use in conjunction with this service. Financial terms of the agreement between Sirius and WSI were not disclosed.

Services

GlobeCast Expands Coverage, Presence In Asia

Globecast said it launched a new satellite distribution platform on Telstar 10 to expand its capacity in Asia and has opened up a new liaison office in Beijing to serve the Asian market. The new platform will enable programmers to target cable head-ends and direct- to-home households with signal coverage and power throughout the entire region. From Globecast’s gateway in Singapore, the C-band platform provides access to 70 million homes across 33 countries from its orbital position at 76.5 degrees East.

Iridium To Deploy Push-To-Talk Service

Iridium Satellite LLC announced plans to deploy a group call push-to-talk voice and data service. The new service will allow for deployment of multi-user communication "nets" from Iridium mobile satphones from anywhere worldwide. The service is designed for public and private sector first responders and is ideal for crisis applications where rapid deployment, reliability and security are key, the company said. The group call push-to-talk communications service will allow one user to talk or transmit data to many users simultaneously. Dispatch centers will be able to set up multi-user communication nets on Iridium satellite channels. The service will be scalable to meet user requirements. It will enable over-the-air group management where dispatch centers can add users to groups as needed.

In addition, users will be able to access voice and data communications at the same time when immediate access to critical systems and information from any location is required. The service will incorporate end-to-end encryption to ensure secure communications. Iridium users desiring this service will be able to upgrade their Iridium 9505 and 9505A satphones with new broadcast/group software and a small push-to-talk ancillary device. When not operating in a group call mode, the handsets will function normally in the traditional phone-to-phone mode.

Panamsat To Launch Satellite Internet Service In Mexico

Panamsat Corp. said Group W-Com, a Group Pegaso company, selected the company to support its satellite-based broadband Internet service. Pegaso Banda Ancha will provide direct-to-home service providers, local telcos and cable television service providers with nationwide, two-way broadband service for consumers, enterprises and hotels. Pegaso Banda Ancha plans to initiate its service in Mexico and expand to Central and South America. Panamsat is supporting Pegaso Banda Ancha with a combination of satellite and terrestrial services including dedicated national Mexican coverage on its PAS-1R satellite, as well as high-speed Internet connectivity and ground support for Pegaso’s Surfbeam hub in Panamsat’s global customer service center in Ellenwood, GA.

Technology

Andrew Corp Introduced New VSAT Antenna Products

Andrew Corp. showcased two VSAT antenna designs. The VSAT antennas, a new 75-centimeter elliptical Ku-band receive-transmit system and a new high-wind, 66-centimeter elliptical Ka-/Ku-band system, will offer transmission solutions for enterprise network applications. The antennas will be available this summer for volume production. (Andrew Corporation, 10500 W. 153rd St, Orland Park, IL 60462-3099; Tel: 708/349-3300; Web: http://www.andrew.com)

Virtual Conexions Launches New Modem

Virtual Conexions recently launched its VC-1000 satellite access modem. Virtual Conexions said the product offers multi-site organizations the power to simply and securely extend the reach of broadband IP networking solutions for locations not served by land- based networks. The modem is aimed at organizations seeking a cost-effective way to develop or extend broadband IP networks. (Virtual Conexions Inc., 410 St. Nicolas, suite 600, Montreal (Quebec), Canada, H2Y 2P5; Tel: 514/842-4460; Fax: 514/842-4485; Web: http://www.virtualconexions.com)

XM Satellite Radio Unveils First XM-Ready Receivers And Home Theater Systems

Yamaha Electronics Corp. and XM Satellite Radio announced a partnership under which the companies will bring to the market the first XM-ready home entertainment products. Yamaha will manufacture four new receivers and several new home-theater-in-a-box systems with XM "Connect-and-Play," a technology designed to integrate XM into a broad range of home entertainment products. The first Yamaha XM-ready receivers will be available at retail outlets in early April. (XM Satellite Radio, 1500 Eckington Place, NE, Washington, DC 20002; Tel: 202/380-4000; Fax: 202/380-4500; Web: http://www.xmradio.com)