TAMPA, Fla. — EchoStar said its long-awaited Jupiter 3 satellite ought to be ready for a Falcon Heavy launch in August, although its deployment faces further delays if a better priority government project takes this window.
The five hundred gigabit-per-second Americas-focused satellite, originally slated to launch in 2021 before production delays at Maxar Technologies, is required to alleviate broadband capability constraints which have led to subscriber losses for the operator.
Broadband subscribers at EchoStar’s service provider subsidiary Hughes fell 51,000 over the three months ended March 31 to about 1.18 million, the corporate reported May 9.
Existing U.S. subscribers are using about 15% more bandwidth on average year-on-year, compounding the operator’s capability woes as fierce competition also takes a toll on consumer subscriber levels.
EchoStar said a technique to allocate existing capability to more profitable consumer areas and enterprise customers helped temper subscriber levels in Latin America.
Still, consolidated revenue fell 12.3% year-over-year to $439.6 million for the primary quarter of 2023.
Adjusted EBITDA, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, dropped 18.6% to $135 million.
Incoming capability to the rescue
EchoStar said it expects Maxar to ship Jupiter 3 to its Florida launch site in June.
Although SpaceX has reserved an August launch slot, the operator warned this stays “subject to preemption by certain higher-priority government launches.”
SpaceX is projected to make use of a Falcon Heavy to launch the Space Force’s unspecified USSF-52 mission in July. A Falcon Heavy can also be lined as much as launch NASA’s Psyche asteroid exploration mission in October. Each missions have suffered delays amid payload readiness and range scheduling issues.
Delivering Jupiter 3 in June would save Maxar from making additional payments to EchoStar under a compensation plan agreed last 12 months due to production delays.
The Ka-band satellite, which might greater than double the capability of Jupiter 2 that launched in 2017, is slated to enter business service in the ultimate three months of 2023.
Other growth avenues
EchoStar is constant to look for investment opportunities with the $1.7 billion money it has in reserve.
In February, the corporate ordered 28 small satellites from Astro Digital for an S-band constellation called Lyra that it expects to start out launching next 12 months for connecting distant Web of Things (IoT) devices.
EchoStar said it is usually within the design and engineering phase for a bigger connectivity constellation of a whole lot of satellites for deployment over the second half of this decade.
While EchoStar said May 9 it is simply too early to debate details about this constellation, the corporate said it might offer higher bandwidth 5G services amid its push into providing connectivity on to devices.