No one ever said that building out a 600-satellite telecommunications array would be easy, but Declan Ganley’s Rivada Space Networks – which is building a major constellation he calls the OuterNet – is encountering plenty of hurdles along the way, if recent news reports are anything to go by.
A report in Handelsblatt, the respected German business newspaper, cited an email that Ganley wrote in June to employees of the German-headquartered Rivada Space Networks in which he wrote that “we are paying salaries late this month”, while also reporting that some suppliers had also endured slow payments.
According to Handelsblatt, Ganley’s email explained there had been “similar delays in the past”, adding that “we are not yet generating any revenue and are being financed by investors through Rivada Networks in the USA”.
When Cantillon contacted Rivada, a spokesman said: “Of course Rivada Space Networks is dependent on investment in its pre-launch phase. No satellite company has ever been different, in the history of the world.”
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Of course, that email was six months ago and since then, the spokesman said, “all salaries are fully paid up and current” and that in the meantime “a bonus scheme was put in place and paid to make up for this”.
Similarly, the issues with suppliers are in hand, the spokesman said, and they “regret any delays in payments to suppliers”.
Separately, there was a further hurdle thrown up by regulators in Liechtenstein, who expressed concerns about Rivada’s business model, as reported in specialist telecommunications website Space Intel Report.
According to that, “Liechtenstein’s telecom regulator has rescinded the licence awarded to Rivada Space Networks for a large broadband constellation of low-orbiting satellites, leaving Rivada without the regulatory priority it has highlighted as one of its key assets”.
The background to this is rather complicated, but the short version is that any company looking to exploit radio spectrum – the basis of any telecommunications network – does so by registering it with a local regulator, and one of those local regulators with whom Rivada did so is in Liechtenstein. That, at a global level, is overseen by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), an agency of the United Nations.
Rivada was keen to point out that its spectrum rights are secured “through a mix of filings in different countries and market access,” of which the Liechtenstein process was just one part.
It has another filing with the authorities in Germany, the company said, “which has unique benefits for Rivada and is fully sufficient for the needs of our business plan and customers”.
The rescinding of the Liechtenstein license, the company’s spokesman said, “does not affect the ITU filing itself but only the administrative conditions to operate”, and in any case they had already “been through one withdrawal and reallocation process in Liechtenstein, and as previously we are engaged in an ongoing constructive dialogue with the appropriate Liechtenstein authorities”.
Nevertheless, it’s a time-consuming and presumably costly process, requiring them to come up with a new version of the “business plan that will meet the applicable milestone deadlines for these filings”.
The fear in all this is not just the expense, but the effect it will have on Rivada’s ability to meet the deadline for getting its first 300 satellites up in orbit, and several space industry analysts have expressed their doubts that the time left will be sufficient.
Rivada, however, are not concerned, and told Cantillon they are “pushing ahead with our 600-satellite constellation, which will be fully deployed in accordance with the expectations of our primary customers”.
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