EchoStar Takes S-Band Step; SES, Intelsat See Air-Web Rebound

June's launch of EchoStar's S-band nanosatellite is "an important step in perfecting" the company’s global S-band non-geostationary satellite spectrum rights for mobile satellite service, Chief Strategy Officer Anders Johnson told analysts during a call this week as the company announced Q2. He said the company is focused on “full integration” of S-band satellite services into 5G networks and the 2022 standards release by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project will include non-terrestrial networks and address satellite’s role in 5G. EchoStar said HughesNet lost 20,000 U.S. subscribers, a trend that will continue near term as HughesNet is capacity constrained. Hughes Network Systems President Pradman Kaul said the hybrid network architecture it’s exploring with OneWeb should let it offer a viable product that makes it eligible for federal broadband subsidies. SES CEO Steve Collar said the company is "fully on track" to complete phase 1 of the U.S. C-band clearing this year, and it expects to start receiving reimbursement compensation in coming months, on a call Wednesday as it released results. He said cruise ship and aviation connectivity is picking up and SES' video revenue improved its trajectory for the first half of the year. SES said video revenue of $622.7 million for H1 was down 3.9% from H1 2020, vs. an 8% decline a year ago. Collar said SES expects to be "flattening the curve" in the medium term with its video distribution business. Also reporting in-flight connectivity improvements, Intelsat said Tuesday in-flight helped drive network services growth, which was $221 million, up 25% year over year. It said video revenue was $184.2 million, down 9% due to a service migration by a customer from Intelsat's network to its own network assets.