Discovery Communications and TF1 Group today announced Discovery would acquire a controlling interest in Eurosport International through an extension of their larger strategic partnership first announced in December 2012. The deal to increase Discovery’s interest from 20 to 51% accelerates the original agreement by nearly one year.

Informa Telecoms & Media today revealed its predictions and trends for 2014 for the telecoms and media sectors. Telecoms operator consolidation will be a recurring theme throughout 2014. In addition to in-market consolidation – Informa Telecoms & Media is seeing a slow but steady transition to three-operator mobile markets – we expect to see regional and global telecoms operator groups entering into discussions and potential deals.

Synergy Core, an IT infrastructure and Cloud Solutions company, announced today that the purchase of SDN Global has been completed. SDN Global provides fixed and mobile broadband VSAT connectivity services.

Larry Jones, remaining founder of SDN Global has been named CEO and is now co-owner of the Charlotte based satellite services company joined by co-owner James P. Burke of McKinney, TX. 

SintecMedia announced a deal for the potential acquisition of Pilat Media and its merger into SintecMedia. The deal is worth approximately US$103 million. A large number of shareholders of Pilat Media have agreed to sell at the offered price and subsequently the board of Pilat Media decided to recommend the deal to all its other shareholders.

Harris Broadcast, a portfolio company of The Gores Group and a m content management and network infrastructure solutions serving the global broadcast, communication service provider, government and enterprise markets, today announced it has completed the acquisition of Imagine Communications, a  digital video solutions provider that deliver bandwidth-efficient services with optimum video quality.

The 6th edition of IDATE’s M2M Market report, covering 2013-2017, reveals that a healthy growth rate has finally taken hold in this promising but, up until recently, underperforming market. This performance is being spurred by increased use within the main areas of application (automotive, consumer electronics and utilities) and is expected to accelerate even further over the next five years as M2M spreads to other sectors of activity.

The 2014 International CES® opens today as a record breaking show with more than 3,200 exhibitors across the largest show floor in history – more than two million net square feet of exhibit space – breaking last year’s previously set record of 1.92 million net square feet. Innovation and the promise and power of technology drove this year’s preshow press events that kicked off with CES Unveiled LAS VEGAS on Sunday night with 99 tabletop displays where exhibitors provided a sneak preview of their show floor product launches.

In my previous column  I previewed GVF High Throughput Satellites 2013: Game-Changer in Action - The London Roundtable. I am very pleased to report that several participants in this latest program in the GVF-EMP Conference Partnership portfolio described the event as “A very successful conference, by any standard.” Here, in this contribution to the final edition of 2013, I wish to provide you, the reader, with the means to access at least some of the flavor of the series of great dialogs which took place in London on 5th and 6th December 2013.

Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) successfully launched the THAICOM 6 satellite for Asian satellite operator THAICOM.  The Falcon 9 rocket delivered THAICOM 6 to its targeted 295 x 90,000 km geosynchronous transfer orbit at 22.5 degrees inclination.  It was the second successful launch for a commercial company by Spaex into geostationary transfer orbit in a little over a month. The Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched the SES-8 satellite last month.

EchoStar Corp. announced today that it has acquired 100% ownership of Solaris Mobile Ltd, a next-generation mobile satellite services (MSS) operator based in Dublin, Ireland and one of the European Union licensees of mobile satellite service with a complementary ground component (S band).