The spacecraft, also known as ChinaSat-16, will test Ka-band communications and other spacecraft technologies.
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.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s bare-knuckled attack on satellite operators’ refusal to share Ka-band spectrum with future 5G terrestrial mobile providers ripped through the Satellite 2016 conference here like a cold mountain wind.
Satellite fleet operator Telesat of Canada on Feb. 25 said it was about to order two small Ka-band telecommunications satellite to be launched into low Earth orbit in 2017 to validate technologies the company would apply to a global constellation of broadband spacecraft.
Satellite broadband hardware and service provider ViaSat Inc. on Feb. 9 fully unveiled its plan to cover the world with three 1-terabit-per-second-throughput Ka-band satellites and accelerate its near-term market expansion by changing launch-service providers and forming a joint venture with Eutelsat of Europe.
Satellite fleet operators SES of Luxembourg and Avanti Communications of London have concluded a Ka-band spectrum agreement under which Avanti has transferred to SES spectrum rights outside Avanti’s current commercial coverage regions valued at $25.1 million, the two companies said.
LeoSat LLC, which is planning a global low-orbiting satellite constellation of Ka-band satellites to provide high-speed data transfers using intersatellite links, expects an initial verdict on its system architecture and cost by July following the completion of a feasibility study.
A company that has secured customer commitments from South Pacific island nations for a Ka-band satellite broadband delivery project expects to use those preorders to complete a third round of financing and start production of two Ka-band payloads this year.
ViaSat Inc. said its selection of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket to launch the ViaSat-2 broadband satellite in mid-2016 was driven by Falcon Heavy’s “ability to lift more than twice the payload of the next-closest launch vehicle at only one-third the cost.”
Inmarsat said its three-satellite Global Xpress broadband service will not be available globally until mid-2015.
Al Yah 3 follows Yahsat’s failed attempt earlier this year to secure rights to a Brazilian satellite slot at auction.
Eutelsat said Via Sat Brasil had leased the Ka-band broadband capacity on the Eutelsat 3B satellite.
British regulators approved a licensing regime for maritime and aeronautical use of Ka-band satellite frequencies.
C-Com has seen such a quick adoption of Ka-band for mobile applications including satellite newsgathering, emergency services and telemedicine worldwide that Ka-band could be a majority of the company’s business within five years.
CEPT has agreed that Ka-band terminals on planes, ships and land-based vehicles are not themselves moving even if they are on moving platforms.
While C-band remains the most urgent of their concerns in the run-up to a meeting of global frequency and orbital-slot regulators in 2015, the threat to Ka-band is already on the horizon.
