SpeedCast Ltd, has completed, with the support of its majority shareholder, TA Associates, a buyout of maritime services provider Elektrikom Satellite Services, based in the Netherlands.

The Society of Satellite Professionals International (SSPI), a non-profit organization, was established in 1986 by satellite professionals working in the satellite industry. SSPI supports worthwhile satellite-related and educational projects, as well as other community service projects.

Nevion and T-VIPS, pioneers of media transport for broadcasters, service providers and government entities worldwide, announced Wednesday the completion of their merger following regulatory approvals.

The new company, named Nevion, said it is committed to preparing customers for the next generation of media transport from acquisition to the home. The merger is structured as a cash and shares transaction. No further financial details of the deal were revealed.

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), which started purely as a military application, has now widened to include all possible users - government agencies, industries, and even individuals. Frost & Sullivan analysis forecasts increasing prominence of Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) data derived from Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and associated Value Added Services (VAS) in the next 10 to 20 years.

Despite a record-breaking 1.87 million square feet of space for exhibits at the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show, the real buzz wasn't about hardware -- it was about connectivity, apps and the cloud. New research from Digitas, a digitally led integrated brand agency, and Brandwatch, a social media monitoring and analytics company, analyzed over 330,000 social media mentions to reveal what trends and products coming out of CES really matter to people worldwide.

US satellite TV provider DirecTV added 100,000 net subscribers in the fourth quarter raising its total subscriber base to more than 20 million at the end of 2012. DirecTV's Chief Executive said on Tuesday DirecTV had a "good quarter" and the churn was better than expected. But the increase during the quarter was 25,000 less than the subscriber net gain during the same period last year when it added 125,000 subscribers.

Hughes Network Systems today announced that it has shipped more than 487,000 broadband satellite terminals in 2012, the most ever in one year, bringing its cumulative number of satellite terminals shipped worldwide to more than 3.3 million.

Shakespeare once said that the “past is prologue.”  And the significant events of 2012 are a good portent of things to come in 2013 and beyond.  Here are some of the events from 2012 that will shape and influence coming industry trends (not necessarily in order of significance):

Anybody who lives outside an urban area in Europe is familiar with the problem of slow loading internet pages. Due to the steady rise of data streams on modern internet pages it can take ages to load an internet page these days, often forcing the browser to time out. While internet access is widely regarded as a right and no longer a privilege – and social, economic and even political development is increasingly dependent on broadband connectivity – millions of people across Europe suffer from insufficient or even non-existent internet connectivity. 

Following the conclusion of the widely applauded GVF Ka Roundtable Assembly 2012: Satellite Service Provision Game-Changer in Action event, which took place in London on 5th & 6th December 2012 with approximately 100 delegates attending, the satellite industry has now called for a further platform to facilitate extended industry and end-user dialog about high-capacity and high-throughput satellite systems, new ground infrastructures, and advanced networking applications.