NewSat announces second, partial, broadband satellite

Stuart Corner
Friday, 26 November 2010 09:13

IT Industry - Strategy

Australian satellite services provider, NewSat (ASX: NWT) says it has finalised an agreement to obtain dedicated capacity on an, unspecified, future satellite that will enable it to deliver satellite broadband services to Australia, PNG and Timor Leste.

NewSat has been planning to build its own satellite, Jabiru 1, for several years, but has yet to confirm that this project is going ahead. Nevertheless, the company said: "Jabiru 2 is scheduled to be in orbit by early 2013 and will supplement the capacity already planned for the previously announced Jabiru 1 satellite.

Despite apparently having been passed over for any role in the satellite portion of the NBN, NewSat announced in June that it was planning a second satellite.

The NewSat satellite payload, dubbed Jabiru 2, will comprise 216MHz of Ku Band capacity and, according to NewSat, will have the potential to generate over $125 million of highly profitable revenue over its fifteen (15) year life span.

CEO, Adrian Ballintine said: "We have been delighted by the strong customer demand for capacity on Jabiru-1. This prompted our decision to acquire further payload on the smaller Jabiru-2."

However he stopped short of making any definitive statement on Jabiru 1 saying: "Today's announcement shows that NewSat's long term vision to become a truly global satellite provider has arrived. We are delighted to announce Jabiru 2 and excited about the significant progress that has been made on Jabiru 1'¦ with Jabiru 1 and 2 planned to commence operations in 2013, NewSat is spectacularly placed to deliver significant future growth and shareholder value."

In a presentation on Jabiru 2 the company said of Jabiru 1 that it was "In the final stages of negotiations on a number of orbital slots with multiple parties which will meet the coverage requirement; that it had "received detailed submissions from the world's premium satellite manufacturers, in response to its RFI [that] are within NewSat's budget and time frame projections."

However financing has not yet been finalised. The company says it expects this to happen by the end of the first quarter of 2011.

NewSat management expects Jabiru 2 to be fully committed by the end of the first quarter 2011 and the company says it will not require borrowings or debt to achieve participation in Jabiru 2. It says that, for reasons of commercial confidence it cannot identify the satellite that will carry Jabiru 2 capacity or the company that will own and operate it.

NewSat says that with over 6GHz capacity, Jabiru 1 will provide high intensity Ka Band spot beams covering the Middle East and North Africa as well as high power Ku Band over Vietnam, Cambodia, and parts of South East Asia.