The Ministerial Round Table at 10th World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum, held from  April 8-12, 2019, emphasized the importance of the WSIS Action Lines – on which many national digital agendas were built – as a key United Nations framework for progress on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Round T​​able participants also highlighted the need for sharing of ​​scarce resources, as well as stre​ngthening collaboration to build confidence and security in the use of technology for good and digital skills so more people can benefit.

The CABSAT 2019 conference, held in Dubai in March, brought together a wide variety of players from the satellite communications industry, namely satellite operators, service providers, broadcasters, and others. As one of the world’s premier satellite broadcast conferences, CABSAT has historically been just that — a predominantly satellite broadcast conference.

The GVF-EMP Partnership has announced preliminary details of speakers for the next event in the partnership’s portfolio of market vertical focused satellite communications programmes – Oilfield Connectivity 2019: The Next Generation Digital Oilfield.

Taking place in the principal hub of Europe’s offshore oil industry, the City of Aberdeen, the programme will examine latest developments in the communications technologies, services and applications that are mission critical for the exploration and production connectivity ecosystem.

Arianespace has orbited the final four latest satellites in the first phase of SES’s O3b constellation. The launch took place on Thursday, April 4, at 2:03 pm (local time) from the Guiana Space Center (CSG), Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana (South America).

Calian Group has acquired SatService, a solid player in the European satellite ground systems market, for euro €4.5 million or US$ 5.05 million.

NAB Show, the world’s largest annual conference and expo for professionals who create, manage, and distribute entertainment across all platforms, will host the renowned Creative Masters Series, as well as a Main Stage session and special programs for content creators. Providing exclusive insight into latest technologies and techniques that are reinventing the storytelling process, the 2019 NAB Show will be held April 6 – 11 in Las Vegas.

In much of the world spring is a season with a nice big payload of rituals, customs and a whiff of hope.  Easter, Passover and Ramadan, on the religious side, occur before summer’s sun blares at us.  Among my favorite rituals is “Hanami,” the ancient Japanese tradition of viewing cherry blossoms (sakura).  I go to Brooklyn’s Botanical Gardens for

After the launch of a whole new generation of small Sat-IoT systems at the end of 2018, the market is looking forward on how these networks are going to fulfill their promise of global low-cost IoT connectivity services. The significant decrease of the overall global IoT connectivity costs and power requirements these new generation Sat-IoT networks bring is expected to lead to a market expansion that will at least equal to the magnitude of this reduction at a factor 25.

In an article for this publication exactly a year ago, I suggested that maybe it was time for us to start thinking of ourselves as the bandwidth industry, rather than the satellite industry. Now, I’m not vain enough to think that that remark was what prompted DirecTV to announce at the end of last year that it would not be ordering any more satellites, and that it would instead concentrate on building out fiber and OTT offerings for its customers.