Charlie Ergen’s EchoStar has signed a $1.3 billion (€1.1bn) initial contract with Canada-based MDA Space to build 100 or so low Earth orbiting ‘MDA Aurora’ satellites for its proposed global Direct-to-Device scheme, addressing a potential “350 million Americans” and “more than 7 billion additional people globally”.
EchoStar says the total cost of its initial constellation of 200 satellites is estimated at some $5 billion. But the overall scheme could extend to “thousands of satellites” says the operator. EchoStar will use its S-band/2 GHz spectrum rights (although there may be problems with European access to spectrum).
But there are other significant costs, not least securing launch capability from only a small portfolio of potential rocket builders, many of which are fully booked for years to come.
While the industry expects more hard news to emerge in September at the Paris World Satellite Business Week event, Ergen needs to act sooner than later.
For example, a launch of eight satellites for Globalstar – with Apple’s backing – should have happened in the first-half of this year, and has yet to happen and is not expected until Q4. There’s a squabble between Apple, MDA (which is building the satellites) and RocketLab which is building the satellite’s core bus. Globalstar has cautioned that “important factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those anticipated” within its 10-Q, the risk of the “delay of the completion or launch of new satellites”.
Ergen’s D2D scheme should start being ready for launch in batches starting in 2028, which could mean good news for the Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin rocket business and its New Glenn rocket. Reportedly Bezos has no room in his launch manifest until H2 of 2026.
There’s always SpaceX, of course, but there’s not much love between Ergen and SpaceX’s Elon Musk who are battling over 2 GHz spectrum rights.
The problem for EchoStar is that the launch business isn’t getting any easier given there’s a very active queue of would-be satellite deployments, and not much in the way of cargo space.
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