Barcelona-firma with a wide-ranking satellite with the largest list to make a visible MWC article when it announced a Vodafone deal to provide service throughout Europe. But there is another task: taking 40 other satellites in the low land orbit to inaugurate trade service to partners involving AT&T and Verizon.
In a Wednesday interview here, Scott Wisniewski, president and leading strategy official at AST, traveled the firm’s next steps to bring the roaming satellite to the existing phones.
Satco, the Joint Enterprise AST will create with Vodafone, seeing the wireless carrier build a set of land stations to connect AST satellites to mobile networks throughout Europe. “We are more integrated into their network than others who are developing additional technology services,” Wenicewski said. He added that ATT will not make a capital contribution to Vodafone’s work on the ground and plans to share 50/50 revenues with that company.
He also pointed out a bonus for anxious Europeans for the great role of American technology firms on the continent: “One side effect is traffic growing, traffic falls, but everything remains within the country.”
From the conversations here, these concerns have only been back in the last month, thanks to the transactional access to Trump administration to Elon Musk’s external relations and double roles as the White House CEO and Henchman CEO.
Weniewski accepted those concerns, but described Satco as a main step in providing “European sovereignty”. As he said: “The political environment comes and go, but having a solution that is European is important, and that is what we are trying to create with Vodafone here.”
AST is also preparing to follow his successful start of September of the first five Bluebird satellites. Ast used a spacex rocket Falcon 9 for that mission, but its next start will take place in India. It will also use the big new Glenn rocket to Blue Origin to speed its distribution.
“We’ve made contracts in a diverse way,” Wenicewski said for AST access to securing starting services. “We’re counting on blue origin, and they’ve done a great job so far.”
The Massive Fair of New Glenn’s cargo, which had a successful debut in January, is especially attractive to Asts because its Bluebird satellites are so great. “It can support up to 8 satellites anyone,” he said.
These spaceships – about 2,400 square meters each – are designed to support much more equipment than the small Starlink Satellites of the Spacex. AST says this will allow it to start providing 45 service in space and reaching a first 60 construction.
Wenicewski withdrew against skepticism such as a vase in X by Ben Longmier, old director for Satellite Satellite Engineering, who suggested that AST customers would have “tens of minutes” between work links. Weniewski said those 45 first satellites would allow “continuous service” in width throughout the US, Europe and Japan.
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“We have tested and demonstrated about 20Mbps,” he told AST downloads. The uploads will be “about half as good as downlink”, which in the previous testing has supported the video call through space.
Formerly during those future 40 satellites, AST plans to reduce the involvement of custom ASIC (integrated specific application circuit) that it developed to maximize capacity. The simplest processor in the previous construction satellites will allow the same coverage, but will leave the satellites with about half the capacity of the ASIC network, which he said “is controlling as designed”.
At the US, AST can face a much bigger change in its space equipment as a result of a January agreement to obtain specific satellite radio spectrum from the bankrupt ligado networks firm. That L spectrum does not require a new regulatory authorization and can allow AST to sell direct service to clients. But unlike the current AST offer, this spectrum requires specific phones (this is why Globalstar satellite messages for the iPhone, also submitted through the specific satellite spectrum, works only on the latest models) and the new hardware in orbit.
“Think the same satellite design, but the active load has been changed slightly,” Wisniewski told the potential L. gang satellites but first the company has to rotate the AT&T and Verizon service and see those conveyors paying customers.
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About Rob Pegoraro
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