The global satellite landscape is full of new companies aiming to carve out a niche for themselves in an increasingly competitive business. In the FSS sector, newcomers to the business are relatively scarce, with most of the operators being established for quite some time. In Europe, Avanti Communications is trying to upset the traditional order not only on the European satellite landscape but globally. Its plans really started to come into fruition late last year when its first satellite, Hylas-1, was successfully launched by Arianespace. The satellite, which is located at 33 degrees West, has a flexible payload that enables Avanti to change the bandwidth of its eight Ka-band beams while in orbit to maximize satellite efficiency.
Avanti CEO David Williams has plans for many more satellites during the next few years beginning with Hylas-2, which Avanti aims to launch in 2012. Deploying 24 fixed beams and one steerable beam, the satellite aims to provide strong coverage across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Williams talks about the task at hand, procurement plans beyond Hylas-2, and the overall vision for Avanti Communications in the next 10 years.
VIA SATELLITE: How much capacity have you sold on Hylas-1? When do you hope to have filled the satellite?
Williams: It is our intention to fill the Hylas-1 satellite within three years of the satellite going into service. We always had a target peak utilization rate under contract by the day of service launch of 25 percent and, when we launched service in April, we had actually achieved a peak utilization rate of capacity under contract of 35 percent. So, this gives me reasonable confidence that we will fill Hylas-1 within the three-year target we have given ourselves.
VIA SATELLITE: At the time of launch you said that you were conducting an RFP to procure at least one satellite. Can you give an update on this?
Williams: We are ready to go in terms of design and engineering. We have told our investors that we will not procure the next satellite until it can be financed through customer commitments. We are quite protective of our shareholders returns, and the best way to finance that satellite is to sell a large amount of capacity to customers and use that to procure low-cost debt finance. We are making very good headway on that. It is very important we finance this prudently and efficiently, and not aggressively. During the last few months, we have made some pretty good progress. We are constantly evaluating the opportunities for Ka-band satellites in new geographies.
New satellite procurements have to be driven by the market. We don’t want to do lots of big speculative projects; it has to be driven by market take-up. The situation we have is that we already have one satellite that is showing real world results and one going up shortly. Customers in new geographies will want to have a look themselves at what Ka-band satellites can do and we can now show them this. This is helping us encourage new customers in new geographies to make commitments on which we can then procure new satellites. A significant part of management time is spent pursuing those projects.
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