Having been regaled on the wonders of non-geostationary satellites by various delegations seeking licenses for Iridium and ICO and other systems that ultimately fizzled out, I was originally skeptical about O3B. But they answered my questions well (despite a messed up presentation at PTC a few years back) and I have been promoting this solution ever since. Happy to know they’ll break even on cash flow by middle 2016.
Away from the headlines, Google — an initial O3b backer — has not raised its 5 percent equity share in the company but has kept up with the capital raises to avoided share dilution.
What matters to SES shareholders is the money, not the technology, and at SES’s June 17 investor conference O3b Chief Executive Steve Collar gave a snapshot of the company’s current status.
Absent from Collar’s remarks was any reference to the $300 million insurance payment O3b claimed because of the defect of the first four satellites. SES has said it is in favor of allowing O3b to use the cash to invest in the business.
Collar said O3b has 25 governments and corporate customers now under contract, with another 15 expected to be under contract by October. The current customers have booked 22 gigabits per second of capacity on the O3b fleet.
Of the first eight customers, including Pacific island nations that, without fiber access, are starved for capacity as a way of keeping young people from weighing anchor, seven have increased their original contract volumes.
Papua New Guinea, he said, has increased its original 360 megabits-per-second contract nearly sixfold, to 2 gigabits per second. South Sudan and Madagascar have also added capacity to their original commitments.
– See more at: http://spacenews.com/2014-top-fixed-satellite-service-operators-once-mocked-03b-investment-now-force-multiplier-for-ses/#sthash.OgmTy3AP.dpuf
Comments are closed.