The GVF High Throughput Satellite Roundtable – High Throughput Ka, Ku and C band Satellite Communications: On Planes, Trains, Ships,… in Cities, Villages and Living Rooms will take place at the Renaissance Downtown Hotel, Washington DC on May 21 & 22, 2013.

The 18th event in the Oil & Gas Communications Series, and the 6th for the European hydrocarbons industry communications environment, Oil & Gas Communications Europe 2013: North & Northwest – The North Sea, The Arctic Ocean & The Atlantic Margin, will take place at the Marriott Hotel, Dyce, Aberdeen on 14th & 15th May 2013.

SpeedCast Ltd today announced the buyout of Pactel International, a satellite communications service provider based in Australia. Pactel provides satellite communications solutions throughout Australia and the Pacific.  The company focuses on servicing its customers’ requirements for Internet, private networking and voice services.  Founded in 1999, Pactel is headquartered in Sydney, Australia, and has additional offices in Perth, Australia and Jakarta, Indonesia.   

Spain’s Telefonica S.A. has sold its remaining shares in DTH provider Hispasat to Eutelsat for €56 million in cash.In its financial filing, Telefonica revealed it had signed a contract with Eutelsat Services & Beteiligungem, GmbH for the sale of its remaining stake in Hispasat, S.A., subject to approval of foreign investment.

Dish Network Corp. chairman Charlie Ergen is gambling big time again. He has just upped the ante on the bidding game for Sprint Nextel, the third-largest U.S. wireless carrier, to US$25.5 billion in an effort to elbow out Japan’s SoftBank US$20.1 billion offer. The move is a big Blackjack gamble that Ergen is used to but the deal is rife with danger. Even if Ergen wins this bet, it could end into a pyrrhic victory and bring Dish to the edge.  

The 2013 edition of ITU’s flagship regulatory report ‘Trends in Telecommunication Reform’, released today, highlights the increasingly global nature of information and communication technology (ICT) regulation and the crucial link between effective regulation of the ICT sector and the range, quality and affordability of ICT services available to consumers and business users alike.

Eutelsat Communications (Euronext Paris: ETL) today revealed the first results of its new survey on TV reception modes and trends across its global footprint, with a presentation in Rome of the Italian broadcasting landscape. Working in collaboration with Ipsos, Eutelsat announced that 8.2 million homes are now equipped with a Direct-to-Home antenna, consolidating the role of satellites as a core broadcast infrastructure serving one in three TV homes in Italy.

After a slow start, digital TV penetration is about to rocket in Latin America – from less than a third of homes at end-2012 to nearly 45% by end-2013 and onto 84% by 2018, according to a new report from Digital TV Research. To put it another way, 100 million digital TV households (in the 19 countries covered in the Digital TV Latin America report) will be added between 2011 and 2018 to take the total to 134 million.

C-COM Satellite Systems Inc., a global provider of mobile auto-deploying satellite antenna systems, today announced financial results for its first quarter ending February 28, 2013.Revenues have increased by 50% to $3,929,630 compared with results from the same period last year, when total revenues were $2,611,986. The company is reporting a net income of $907,301, or 0.3 cent per share, compared with results for the same period last year when there was a net income of $283,659, or 0.1 cent per share.

The UK needs to remove its broadband blackspots and increase coverage for the entire country in order to avoid opening another digital divide, warns network access specialist, The Kenton Group. This announcement comes at a time when many UK homes and businesses are still without basic broadband, and ahead of next week’s DSL Acceleration conference and exhibition.