Stories about the broadband industry.
CesiumAstro has raised a $60M Series B, the company announced this morning. Airbus Ventures and Forever Ventures co-led the round, with L3 Harris also making a strategic investment. Previous investors, including Kleiner Perkins, Lavrock Ventures, Franklin Templeton Blackhorse Fund, and HEICO, also participated in the round. CesiumAstro 101: The startup’s core product is its steerable, […]
Users in Ukraine have reported that Viasat KA-SAT internet service is down in the country, and the outage has spread to other countries in Europe. The likely culprit: a Russian cyberattack on the morning of Feb. 24. Viasat announced Monday morning that it’s consulted cyber experts to investigate the outages. In a statement, the company […]
Lynk announced yesterday that it has completed a demonstration of its direct-to-phone telecom service from its fifth satellite. The company said the satellite connected to thousands of devices on three continents. The Virginia company is hoping to roll out its direct-to-phone two-way communications service later this year. In the meantime, the demo results show that […]
Viasat (NASDAQ: VSAT) reported earnings last Thursday. Highlights for the satellite communications player: $720M in Q4 2021 revenues, which is up 25% year-over-year. Sales in Viasat’s Satellite Services segment were $310M, a YoY increase of 43%, largely driven by new aviation customers. Viasat posted a net loss of $6.6M, which the company attributed to “higher depreciation and […]
Starlink+? If it was following in the footsteps of streaming services, that’s what SpaceX’s satellite internet division would have named its new premium offering. But SpaceX marches to the beat of its own drum and instead went with Starlink Premium, unveiled Tuesday. Price details: The Starlink Premium package costs $2,500 upfront for equipment, along with a $500/month […]
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is prepared to award $1.2B+ in new broadband payouts through its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). The RDOF is intended to reduce the US’s digital divide by subsidizing broadband deployment in rural and underserved areas. The two-phase auction will pay out up to $20.4B to internet service providers over the course of […]
OneWeb has struck up a six-year partnership with a distributor in India, Hughes Communications India (HCIPL), to sell its broadband services within the country. OneWeb does not yet have regulatory approval to operate within India. Both OneWeb and Starlink, which was recently ordered by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to stop preselling the service in the country, […]
This week, SF-based Astranis announced a $90M deal with Andesat, a Latin American telco, to provide broadband capacity to cell towers in Peru. Astranis’s satellite will extend connectivity to underserved, remote pockets of Peru—and help cell networks leapfrog from 2G to 4G across the country. It’s a “landmark deal,” Astranis cofounder and CEO John Gedmark […]
The FCC is in the process of repurposing chunks of mid-band spectrum to accelerate 5G network rollouts. In the US, satellite operators have historically occupied the C-band, a key mid-band chunk. Long story short, those leases are up. Dec. 5 represents a key deadline for C-band satellite operators. If they clear a predetermined portion of […]
India recently instructed citizens to refrain from signing up for SpaceX’s Starlink service. The catalyst: On Friday, India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) tweeted that it noticed Starlink presales are open to potential users in Indian territory. The hang-up: SpaceX needs a DoT license to operate the high-speed, satellite-based broadband internet service in India—and accept Starlink pre-orders. The backstory: India’s DoT has been scrutinizing Starlink […]
SpaceX has updated the Starlink suite with a new user terminal. The dish replaces a larger one sold to beta users. Scaling down: The new terminal is a 19” x 12”, 9.2 lb dish that users can mount to the side of a home (like the older version), their roof, or a pole (new capability). But users won’t get […]
Yesterday, Amazon subsidiary Kuiper Systems asked the US for approval to launch two demonstration satellites, KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2. See the FCC filing here. Amazon says the prototypes will include “much of the technology and subsystems” that will be in Kuiper production satellites. Over the course of two years, Kuiper will validate the satellites’ tech stack on-orbit…and test links […]
