Viasat completes merger with Inmarsat
After two years dealing with regulatory delays, Viasat has finally completed its purchase of Inmarsat, producing a single company that has 8,000 employees and a fleet of nineteen operating satellites.
The key quote from the link however is this:
Their merger announcement sparked additional consolidation plans as operators look to bolster their defenses amid a growing competitive threat from Starlink in the satellite broadband market. Eutelsat announced plans to buy OneWeb in November 2022 and hopes to complete its merger this summer. SES and Intelsat confirmed March 29 they were in talks about merging, although they have not provided a meaningful update since then.
In other words, the older geosynchronous satellite companies are consolidating because of the competition posed by SpaceX’s Starlink system, which also suggests these companies have never competed very aggressively against each other to cut costs. Now that someone new (SpaceX) has arrived doing that, they find their only option is to merge. Apparently the corporate culture in each separate company finds cutting costs difficult. Merger appears to be their only avenue for doing so.
I wonder what will happen to these old satellite companies when (or if) Amazon finally begins launching and operating its own Kuiper constellation, in direct competition with SpaceX. Unless they finally begin to offer a competitive product at a competitive price, I expect after consolidation we will begin to see bankruptcies.
