TECHNOLOGY UPDATE Multi-billion-dollar mergers, new product launches, expanded services and something to put on your visit list for November’s METSTRADE show. Written by Roger Horner
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he Show season started with Cannes and Monaco, and I attended Monaco for business-to-business meetings. Apart from the crew on the yachts in the port, very few crew have attended the Show in recent years, and it was the same again this year. For service companies it has become a b2b industry show. I have heard that the plan the organisers made over the last couple of years, to provide exclusive access to potential owners and charterers on the first day and to increase the day ticket prices, hasn’t worked well. On the other hand, I hear the Cannes Show was quite a success. As always, there is a lot of activity in the satellite world. Eutelsat has combined its geostationary satellite business with OneWeb’s low Earth orbit (LEO) constellation.
Getting approval from at least two-thirds of Eutelsat’s shareholders was the final step for a merger valuing OneWeb at $3.4 billion. More than 87% of Eutelsat shareholders voting at its general meeting on 28th September, during the Monaco Show, supported the OneWeb merger. It comes as competition is heating up between different players in the multibillion-dollar space industry. Morgan Stanley estimates the industry could be worth more than $1 trillion by 2040. Eutelsat is listed on the Euronext Paris Stock Exchange but has applied for a secondary listing on the London Stock Exchange.
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This now makes the Eutelsat Group a European giant in the satellite industry and the first HYBRID satellite operator with 634 Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites and 37 Geostationary (GEO) satellites. OneWeb and Eutelsat were present, with Kymeta and Intellian showing their flat panel antennas, at the Monaco Show this year. We have a couple of Kymeta Peregrine u8 panels on a yacht that was activated briefly in the Med before they set sail for the Caribbean and Florida where there is currently no coverage. As a result, we don’t have any quality service data to report on the performance. The OneWeb service is working in the Med but will not be operational in the Caribbean and Florida for this winter season. Intellian have recently launched a series of flat panel antennas to work with Eutelsat OneWeb.
Intellian’s Flat Panel Series is a suite of both Pro and Compact user terminals that deliver exceptional performance in sleek, small-footprint, and lightweight form factors. Designed for Land Fixed, Land Mobile, Maritime and Government markets, they look like a fantastic solution for customers globally requiring low profile, easy installation, and high performance. Through the Pro and Compact Flat Panels, customers have a choice of four different user terminals to address their specific market needs and use cases. Both the Pro and Compact models come in two versatile configurations: a fixed enterprise terminal and a mobility terminal. These Flat Panel terminals are meticulously designed to meet the unique demands of end users, ensuring reliable connectivity everywhere in the world, on land and at sea. They are rectangular and the Pro panel is 96x50cm and the Compact is 54x42cm.
The Islander #315