Introduction Marlink has gone shopping again. This time, the target is GRC, a specialist provider of satellite communications and managed connectivity services to government, defence and critical infrastructure customers. On the surface, the acquisition looks like another bolt on deal. In reality, it fits neatly into a much broader pattern of capability building. Over the…
Introduction Commercial shipping has already embraced Starlink. The next challenge is convincing the world’s largest fleet operators that bandwidth alone is no longer enough. Wall Street spent last week analysing SpaceX’s latest quarterly earnings. Investors focused on revenues of $7.8 billion, 12 million Starlink subscribers and Elon Musk’s ambitious target of generating $100 billion in…
The advent of LEO connectivity has profoundly changed the inflight connectivity (IFC) landscape in business aviation. Last year, Starlink reportedly installed its solution on 800 aircraft – equating to two installs per day. This is an unprecedented growth rate, especially for the aftermarket. It’s also brought the network operator’s total installed base up to 1,000,…
Introduction The title of this article is a (bad) reference to a translation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s quote “And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you”. An article in The Maritime Executive reminded me that China has been actively seeking to research ways of blocking Starlink, in particular, and…
Craig Foster & Summer Staninski (published Oct 2024) In a recent blog, we examined the collapse of SmartSky Networks and speculated on how other aviation players might react to the fast-advancing Starlink. Now, just weeks later, long-time SmartSky adversary, Gogo, has announced its acquisition of Satcom Direct, confirming predictions of further industry consolidation. In this…
Aside from frequent discussion as to whether I’d visited Sphere, the latest striking addition to the Las Vegas skyline, a common thread ran through many of my meetings at NBAA-BACE last week: who will prevail in the hotly-contested battle for business jet connectivity supremacy? Fittingly, given its location amongst the largest concentration of gaming tables…
In previous blogs and in several of our reports, we’ve covered the “three C’s of in-flight connectivity” (which should really be four when you consider the costs involved). Latency is another important, but often overlooked, part of the business aviation connectivity experience and is defined as the total time it takes a data packet to…
Sign up for our FREE newsletter
We send regular updates on our latest market research findings. Select your sectors of interest below.
