The recently announced merger between the French satellite company Eutelsat (the world’s third-largest satellite operator by revenue) and the United Kingdom’s OneWeb (a fully operational Low Earth Orbit satellite operator) has created the Eutelsat Group, which is now the world’s first GEO-LEO operator. Eutelsat Group is bringing together the best of both GEO and LEO capabilities to offer a one stop shop which brings a direct benefit to all market sectors.

Q-KON Africa has expanded the capacity of its Twoobii platform in response to growing market demand, with the resulting Twoobii-as-a-Service option being provided in collaboration with its international 1st tier providers. This partnership will enhance Q-KON’s services across Africa, extending an array of applications to meet the connectivity needs of businesses, organisations and communities.

Industry analysts expect 17,000 satellites to be launched over the next decade, of which some 58% will be for five new mega low earth orbit (LEO) constellations. Overall, it is anticipated that the space industry will add an estimated 200Tbps of capacity to the global network. From a macro perspective, adding broadband anywhere, anytime capacity to the global grid remains good news and will ultimately transform satellite connectivity and related industries.

Q-KON Africa will be a provider of OneWeb’s high-speed, low-latency satellite
internet connectivity in key African countries to benefit schools, hospitals,
businesses and governments.

Telkom subsidiary BCX is targeting off-grid internet users after forging a partnership with smart satellite service, Twoobii. BCX yesterday announced the Twoobii partnership ahead of the ongoing AfricaCom conference in Cape Town. The Telkom unit believes the partnership deal will bring benefits to South Africans using its Skylink VSAT Access.

Technology group BCX has partnered with Twoobii to enable businesses, merchants and consumers to benefit from seamless voice and data connectivity, with speeds from 2 Mb/s to 20 Mb/s, through its Skylink very small aperture terminal (VSAT) Access.

The desert steppe of Baikonur, 200 km east of Kazakhstan’s remote Aral Sea, seems an odd place to start a conversation about Angolan mobile-phone users. But in mid-October 2022, that’s all anybody was talking about at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The facility was the launch site of Angosat-2, Angola’s second communications satellite – and the fifth African satellite to go into orbit in 2022 alone.

Q-KON’s Dawie de Wet on big changes sweeping the satellite industry

With Starlink’s LEO satellite services expected to be available in Southern Africa from late 2023, local and regional internet service providers ISPs and wireless internet service providers, WISPs are considering the impact on their markets and assessing to what extent this could potentially erode their current business models. By Dr. Dawie de Wet group CEO of QKON Africa and chief engineer for Twoobii.

According to the latest Euroconsult report, the global satellite industry is now on course to build and launch some 17,000 satellites over the next decade. The next ten years will see a race to deploy the first mega-broadband constellations, plus a new constellation for real-time earth observation. What implications will these developments have for the African market?