Kymeta has announced that Walter Z. Berger and S. Douglas Hutcheson have been named Co-Chief Executive Officers of the company.
Starting September 1, 2021, Berger, formerly Kymeta’s President and Chief Operating Officer, will serve as President and co-CEO. Hutcheson, formerly Kymeta’s Executive Chairman, will serve as Executive Chairman and co-CEO. Their combined breadth of telecommunications and technology experience will further strengthen the company’s continued advancement forward and launch Kymeta into the next phase of growth.
Berger and Hutcheson joined Kymeta in May of 2019 and began their co-CEO duties effective September 1, 2021.
“The board recognizes Walter’s outstanding contributions as COO and it is with great pleasure that we announce the added responsibilities of co-CEO where we can further accelerate the progress of Kymeta,” said S. Douglas Hutcheson, Executive Chairman and Co-CEO. “It has been a great pleasure to work with Walter again over the past nearly two and half years and we are excited to formalize the very effective working relationship between the two of us, the board, our customers, and the Kymeta team. This is another step forward for the great progress that Kymeta is building on behalf of our customers and shareholders. It is as a result of this great progress that I am pleased to collaborate with Walter in this exciting time period.”
Kymeta’s connectivity solutions provide revolutionary mobile connectivity on satellite and hybrid satellite-cellular networks to customers around the world that no other antenna company offers today. The announcement follows an impressive year for Kymeta, who was recently named 2021’s Top Ten Hottest Companies in Satellite and Hottest New Mobility Solution for 2021.
Additionally, Kymeta and OneWeb have successfully tested the Kymeta u8 based LEO terminal with OneWeb’s LEO satellite constellation.
Kymeta and OneWeb performed a series of LEO satellite acquisition, tracking and throughput measurements in Toulouse, France. Kymeta plans to leverage these results in the definition of future-proof solutions that are fully integrated and compatible with the rapidly expanding OneWeb system.
The u8 is the first commercially-available flat panel antenna to interoperate with the OneWeb satellite constellation. OneWeb is working with several new user terminal integrators such as Kymeta to explore solutions that meet the needs of Government, Military, Enterprise, Maritime and first responder customers. The commercially-available Kymeta u8 supports fixed and mobile services enabling choice and redundancy for satellite users, and has demonstrated interoperability with low Earth orbit (LEO) and geostationary (GEO) satellite constellations.
Today, the u8 is the only electronically steered flat panel antenna currently available on the market that is compatible with both low Earth orbit (LEO) and geostationary (GEO) satellite constellations. The device supports fixed and mobile services enabling choice and redundancy for satellite users.
The demonstrations in Toulouse showed full-duplex communications between the Kymeta u8 and OneWeb’s satellites. The single aperture antenna achieved downlink and uplink speeds of more than 200 Mbps down and more than 40Mbps up respectively over repeated testing.
The setup of the antenna and the operations for LEO acquisition and tracking were both rapid and easy. This resulted in the antenna being unboxed, deployed, and with an over the air link-up on OneWeb LEO satellites in times unmatched by existing setups. The u8 also offered very good user experience during beam and satellite handover. The adaptability of the software-driven u8 allows for the improvement of capabilities in a more flexible and ubiquitous way.
“We are excited about the performance demonstrated in these early pilot test results and pleased to work with Kymeta as a trusted and knowledgeable partner,” said Valery Gineste, Senior Director of Technology at OneWeb. “The u8 will offer another great choice for OneWeb’s end-customers, particularly those with constrained space requirements or who need communications on the move when OneWeb mobility services start to become available from the end of 2022.”
“The collaboration with OneWeb supports Kymeta’s priority mobile markets, and our solution is a natural fit for OneWeb customer needs,” said Neville Meijers, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Kymeta. “Military, government, enterprise, and first responder markets require demanding, mission critical communications, and we can deliver seamless mobile connectivity to those customers wherever they are in the world.”
