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.

Arabsat 6A Satellite, the last of its 6th generation satellites, was successfully launched this morning by Space X’s Falcon Heavy from Cape Canaveral in Florida, completing the Falcon rocket’s first commercial launch. The Falcon-Heavy rocket was launched at 22:35 (GMT), carrying Arabsat 6A satellite, manufactured by Lockheed Martin, and was placed in the exclusive orbit of Arabsat 30.5 degrees East.

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 this (not Japan.) But the sakura (cherry blossoms) are really nice in a part of New York not necessarily linked to delicacy.

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.

The Satellite Hub Summit @ CABSAT 2019 – GVF’s prominent MENA platform for addressing and analysing evolutionary and revolutionary transitions in satellite technologies, services, applications, and markets – which was a central feature at the Dubai International Convention & Exhibition Centre/Dubai World Trade Centre over 12th to 14th March once again provided an essential and incisive value-added experience for hundreds of exhibition attendees.