- The Texas National Guard has contracted with SkyPort Global Communications to provide satellite communications solutions throughout the state for ongoing operations, training exercises, and in emergencies like recent Hurricane Ike. As part of the agreement, the Guard will co-locate routers at SkyPort’s secure teleport facility at the Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base in Houston and also provide connectivity to dedicated T-1 lines at the Guard’s headquarters at Camp Mabry in Austin. Under the contract, SkyPort will supply ongoing satellite access and up to 5 MHz of bandwidth, giving the Guard access to the world-wide communications network in the event of a loss of land-based network access.
- Vladimir Putin will pump in some $2.6 billion (67 billion rubles) to further development of the Russian GLONASS satellite system. The Russian Prime Minister signed the directive last week and will additionally sign another directive for an additional funding stream $1.8 billion (45 billion rubles) for the Russian space program. The total number of spacecraft to be orbiting this year will be 22, with the experts believing the GLONASS constellation will be able to offer global navigation and positioning by the year 2012. The satellite breakdown is expected to be 18 sats for nav services for Russian Federation territory and 24 for worldwide services.
- Their Unity 4600 satellite receiver is going places... WEGENER Corporation has revealed more than US$800K worth of the units have been ordered by Mega Hertz, a distributor for the cable industry. Expected to start shipping during Q1 of their 2009 fiscal year, the just released receivers will feature support for DVB-S2 demodulation and will also offer legacy support for DVB-S modulation. The Unity 4600 also supports encrypted HD and unencrypted cable programming.
Satnews Daily
September 16th, 2008
ORBITZ