Consumer expenditures on entertainment media in North America and Europe grew a mighty 69 percent to $234.8 billion in 2010, up from $138.8 billion in 2000, with cable and satellite television retaining its primacy as the leading form of entertainment media during the decade, according to IHS Screen Digest research.

Speaking at a Newtec-hosted seminar in Miami last week, various industry analysts predicted robust growth in emerging markets for satellite broadcasting in the next decade.

Los Angeles, May 6, 2011 by Bruce Elbert

According to Research and Markets Cloud Computing Services reached almost US$ 38 Billion in revenues last year. Will satellite service providers get a slice of this important market?

New York, NY, May 5, 2011 by Robert Bell

The public sharing of consumer reviews has become a worldwide phenomenon. Only when it comes to satellite communications, not so much. That is why the World Teleport Association published Satellite Operator Benchmarks 2011.

Space communications assets will be pivotal in supporting the net-centric capabilities required for tighter integration of EW and CIW, cyber/information warfare

US Cable Loses 2 Million Subscribers in 2010, but Telco TV and DTH Satellite actually gained subscribers

US Cable operators saw over two million video customers evaporate from their rolls in 2010, whereas Telco TV and Satellite actually gained customers over the same period—more than compensating for Cable's losses and netting a modest 273,000 new Pay TV subscribers overall. A new report by Strategy Analytics suggests that the US Cable industry may not be taking the news seriously enough.

Inmarsat recently announced that it is working with partner SkyWave Mobile Communications to develop a new low data rate (LDR) tracking, monitoring and messaging service that is planned for launch in Q3 2011. The new device dubbed the IsatData Pro promises to deliver up to 37x data capability of current global M2M services. The announcement stated that compared to typical global M2M offerings that provide data connectivity rates of about 270-340 bytes, the new service aims to deliver near real-time messages of up to 10,000 bytes to the device, and up to 6,400 bytes from the device.

Market researchers at In-Stat say that nearly a third of U.S. households now paying for TV may opt out, or at least down, in the future. Pay TV subscriptions have leveled off, they said, growing just 0.15 percent over 2010. The figure indicates “no current trend toward video cord cutting/shaving,” i.e., the elimination or reduction in services.

There were 5.3 Billion mobile phones in use at the end of 2010.  Mobile phones if we can really still call them “phones” have a myriad of uses beyond making a mere phone call.  They’re used for email, web browsing, gaming, reading books, listening to and downloading music and watching and downloading video.  Total global mobile data traffic is growing rapidly; in 2010 it was 2.6 times greater than in 2009.  Video is becoming the major component of that data. 

Two very different cities will, over the next few months, host conferences in the GVF Oil & Gas Communications Series. Neither of these cities is the political capital if its respective nation, but each is a globally important center in the exploitation of hydrocarbon energy resources.