As we begin the New Year, commercial satellite providers have never had greater opportunities to support the U.S. Department of Defense’s ever-growing need for innovation in communications technology and service delivery.
EchoStar Corp. on Aug. 9 said its recent $1.5 billion in bond offerings, which brought its cash reserve to $3 billion, were intended to provide sufficient liquidity to invest in one or more global satellite projects that it declined to identify.
U.S. satellite television and consumer broadband provider Dish Network Corp. on July 21 said it had lost broadband subscribers this year because of a lack of capacity in high-demand regions and the company’s decision to be stricter about who it lets onto the service.
EchoStar Corp.’s Hughes division on May 10 said a recent consumer satellite broadband contract with the Turkish government and a combined Eutelsat/Facebook deal in Africa are just the start of the company’s ambition of replicating its U.S. success elsewhere.
Hughes Network Systems bested most competing ISPs, including ViaSat, in in an annual U.S. government measure of whether service providers meet their own advertised download and upload speeds.
The announcement comes on the heels of Paris-based Eutelsat’s decision to build a Ka-band satellite for Africa.
Company officials say they are positioning EchoStar to capture the growing demand for broadband regardless of what form it takes.
Mobile satellite services provider Globalstar Inc. has been spared a portion of what is still likely to be a challenging cash call in 2015 following the agreement by ground-network provider Hughes to take payment in Globalstar stock.
The GAO said it had denied a protest by satellite broadband services and equipment provider Hughes over a contract award to Artel for satellite communications support to the SSA.
EchoStar’s Hughes division will lease 16 Ka-band beams to offer a Brazilian consumer broadband service starting in 2016.
In return, EchoStar will take ownership of five Dish-owned satellites that are expected to add at least $145 million to EchoStar’s revenue in 2014.
Hughes will supply a VSAT system including up to 3,000 satellite broadband terminals to Joint-Stock Company Iskra Research & Development.
Globalstar said its ground-hardware provider, Hughes Network Systems, has agreed to purchase $4.3 million in Globalstar stock at a 7 percent discount to its recent trading value in lieu of cash payment for Hughes’ past services to Globalstar.
Hughes reported a 6 percent increase in subscribers to its U.S. satellite consumer broadband service.
Hughes will provide an existing network of 63 very small aperture terminals, satellite bandwidth capable of delivery rates of 1.5 megabits per second, a dedicated IP gateway and support services.
The Jupiter 2 satellite will have 50 percent more capacity than Jupiter 1’s more than 100 gigabits per second.
