SES activates commercial service on O3b mPOWER System

SES' second-generation, software-enabled O3b mPOWER satellite system is now operational and delivering commercial services.

The first six O3b mPOWER satellites are operating at medium Earth orbit (MEO) or 8,000km. SES also has extensive ground infrastructure in place, enabling connectivity services ranging from tens of Mbps to multiple gigabits per second. 

To date, SES has launched six out of 13 O3b mPOWER high-throughput and low-latency satellites, which together with strategically located satellite ground stations, enable SES to serve customers across multiple market segments around the world.

In combination with SES’s MEO and geostationary (GEO) networks as well as access to low Earth orbit (LEO) solutions via strategic partnerships, SES is uniquely positioned as an all-orbit solutions provider delivering an attractive combination of high data rates, low latency, service reliability, and flexibility to meet customers’ requirements anywhere.

“We are very excited that O3b mPOWER is now ready to serve our customers around the world. Over the last few years, our SES team, along with our technology partners across space and ground segments, have worked tirelessly to bring our O3b mPOWER system online. I’m proud to say that all the core infrastructure is deployed, tested and ready on a global basis,” said Adel Al-Saleh, CEO of SES. “The demand for O3b mPOWER solutions is very high, and this moment has been long-awaited by our customers. Over the coming weeks we will work with our mobility, government, enterprise and cloud customers on O3b mPOWER onboarding plans. We’re eager to empower their operations with reliable, high-performance, and secure services.”

The launch of the next two O3b mPOWER satellites is expected in late 2024. 

https://www.ses.com/press-release/sess-o3b-mpower-system-starts-providing-high-performance-connectivity-services

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NASA's Deep Space Optical Comms breaks record

NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment, which is onboard the Psyche asteroid mission spacecraft, successfully transmitted engineering data from over 140 million miles (226 million kilometers) away, 1½ times the distance between Earth and the Sun. The near-infrared transceiver’s 22-centimeter aperture telescope is mounted on an isolation-and-pointing assembly that stabilizes the optics and isolates it from spacecraft vibrations. 

The data sent back by the DSOC transceiver on Psyche was collected by the 200-inch (5.1-meter) Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, using a sensitive superconducting nanowire photon-counting receiver to demonstrate high-rate data transfer.

Signals sent back to the spacecraft are emitted by a high-power near-infrared laser transmitter at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Table Mountain facility near Wrightwood, California. 

During the April 8 test, the spacecraft transmitted test data at a maximum rate of 25 Mbps, which far surpasses the project’s goal of proving at least 1 Mbps was possible at that distance.

"We downlinked about 10 minutes of duplicated spacecraft data during a pass on April 8,” said Meera Srinivasan, the project’s operations lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Until then, we’d been sending test and diagnostic data in our downlinks from Psyche. This represents a significant milestone for the project by showing how optical communications can interface with a spacecraft’s radio frequency comms system.”

NASA is also working using an array of receivers that are geographically dispersed on different mountains to boost the signal.

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/psyche-mission/nasas-optical-comms-demo-transmits-data-over-140-million-miles/

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Google Cloud's Q1 revenue jumps to $9.57B, up 28% yoy

Google Cloud revenue jumped 28% year-over-year to $9.57 billion in Q1 2024. Google Cloud's operating income grew nearly 5x to $900 million in Q1 2024, up from $191 million in Q1 2023.

Alphabet's overall revenue grew 15% year-over-year to $80.5 billion in Q1 2024, driven by strong performances from Google Search, YouTube, and Google Cloud.

Sundar Pichai, CEO, said: “Our results in the first quarter reflect strong performance from Search, YouTube and Cloud. We are well under way with our Gemini era and there’s great momentum across the company. Our leadership in AI research and infrastructure, and our global product footprint, position us well for the next wave of AI innovation.”

Ruth Porat, President and Chief Investment Officer; CFO said: “Our strong financial results for the first quarter reflect revenue strength across the company and ongoing efforts to durably reengineer our cost base. We delivered revenues of $80.5 billion, up 15% year-on-year, and operating margin expansion.”

https://abc.xyz/assets/91/b3/3f9213d14ce3ae27e1038e01a0e0/2024q1-alphabet-earnings-release-pdf.pdf

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Microsoft Q1 revenue grows to$61.9 billion, up 17%

 Citing robust growth in cloud services, Microsoft reported Q1 revenue of $61.9 billion, up 17% compared to last year. Net income was $21.9 billion, up 20%, and diluted earnings per share was $2.94, up 20%.

"Microsoft Copilot and Copilot stack are orchestrating a new era of AI transformation, driving better business outcomes across every role and industry,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft.

“This quarter Microsoft Cloud revenue was $35.1 billion, up 23% year-over-year, driven by strong execution by our sales teams and partners,” said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft.

Highlights

Revenue in Productivity and Business Processes was $19.6 billion and increased 12% (up 11% in constant currency), with the following business highlights:

• Office Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 13% (up 12% in constant currency) driven by Office 365 Commercial revenue growth of 15%
• Office Consumer products and cloud services revenue increased 4% and Microsoft 365 Consumer subscribers grew to 80.8 million
• LinkedIn revenue increased 10% (up 9% in constant currency)
• Dynamics products and cloud services revenue increased 19% (up 17% in constant currency) driven by Dynamics 365 revenue growth of 23% (up 22% in constant currency)

Revenue in Intelligent Cloud was $26.7 billion and increased 21%, with the following business highlights:

• Server products and cloud services revenue increased 24% driven by Azure and other cloud services revenue growth of 31%

Revenue in More Personal Computing was $15.6 billion and increased 17%, with the following business highlights:

• Windows revenue increased 11% with Windows OEM revenue growth of 11% and Windows Commercial products and cloud services revenue growth of 13% (up 12% in constant currency)
• Devices revenue decreased 17% (down 16% in constant currency)
• Xbox content and services revenue increased 62% (up 61% in constant currency) driven by 61 points of net impact from the Activision acquisition
• Search and news advertising revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs increased 12%

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2024-Q3/press-release-webcast

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T-Mobile US posts strong Q1, raises guidance

T-Mobile US reported Q1 service revenues of $16.1 billion, up 4% year-over-year. Net income was $2.4 billion, up 22% year-over-year, and diluted earnings per share was $2.00, up 27% year-over-year.

“T-Mobile had a great start to 2024 with industry-leading growth in service revenues and profitability,” said Mike Sievert, CEO of T-Mobile. “Even as the rest of wireless saw moderated customer growth, our momentum continued thanks to our increasingly differentiated combination of the best value, best network, and best experiences that customers love. We’re excited about our path forward and our raised guidance for 2024 reflects our confidence in what’s to come.”

Some operating metrics

• Postpaid net account additions of 218 thousand decreased 69 thousand year-over-year.
• Postpaid net customer additions of 1.2 million decreased 73 thousand year-over-year.
• Postpaid phone net customer additions of 532 thousand decreased 6 thousand year-over-year. Postpaid phone churn of 0.86% improved 3 basis points year-over-year.
• Prepaid net customer losses of 48 thousand decreased 74 thousand year-over-year. Prepaid churn of 2.75% improved 1 basis point year-over-year.
• High Speed Internet net customer additions of 405 thousand decreased 118 thousand year-over-year. T-Mobile ended the quarter with 5.2 million High Speed Internet customers.
• Total net customer additions of 1.2 million decreased 147 thousand year-over-year. 
• Total customer connections increased to a record high of 120.9 million
• Nearly 95% of 5G network traffic is carried on mid-band spectrum, including the recently deployed Auction 108 spectrum. 
• 85% of 5G traffic on sites with all three spectrum bands (600MHz, 1.9GHz, and 2.5GHz) deployed

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Intel posts Q1 revenue of $12.7B, up 9% yoy

Intel reported Q1 revenue of $12.7 billion, up 9% year over year (YoY). There was GAAP earnings (loss) per share (EPS) attributable to Intel was $(0.09).

“We are making steady progress against our priorities and delivered a solid quarter,” said Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO. “Strong innovation across our client, edge and data center portfolios drove double-digit revenue growth in Intel Products. With Intel 3 in high-volume production, leading-edge semiconductors are being manufactured in the U.S. for the first time in almost a decade and we are on track to regain process leadership next year as we grow Intel Foundry. We are confident in our plans to drive sequential growth throughout the year as we accelerate our AI solutions and maintain our relentless focus on execution, operational discipline and shareholder value creation in a dynamic market.”

Highlights

• CCG:As of the end of the first quarter, more than 5 million AI PCs have shipped since the December 2023 launch of Intel Core Ultra processors, supported by more than 100 software vendors. Intel expects to exceed its prior forecast of 40 million AI PCs by the end of 2024.
• DCAI: At Intel Vision, the company introduced the Intel Gaudi 3 AI accelerator, projected to deliver on-average 50% faster inference and 40% greater inference power efficiency than Nvidia H1001 on leading generative AI (GenAI) models. Intel also announced new Intel Gaudi accelerator customers and partners, including NAVER, Dell Technologies, Bosch, Supermicro and many others. Additionally, the next-generation E-core Intel Xeon, code-named Sierra Forest, achieved product release this week, and Intel expects Granite Rapids to be released in the third quarter.
• NEX: At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Intel introduced the new Intel Edge Platform – a modular, open software platform enabling enterprises to develop, deploy, and manage edge and AI applications at scale. The Intel Edge Platform has broad ecosystem support from Amazon Web Services, Lenovo, Red Hat, SAP and Wipro. Intel also announced the Open Platform for Enterprise AI, which aims to accelerate secure, cost-effective GenAI deployments for businesses by driving interoperability across a diverse and heterogeneous ecosystem, starting with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).

Intel Foundry Highlights

Intel continues to drive customer adoption of Intel 18A, with a major U.S. aerospace and defense customer committing to Intel 18A, bringing Intel Foundry's external customer commitments on Intel 18A to six. This quarter, Microsoft also announced its plans to design a chip on Intel 18A.

Intel unveiled its process technology roadmap beyond its five-nodes-in-four-years process goal, adding Intel 14A to its leading-edge node lineup following Intel 18A and announcing several specialized node evolutions for Intel 3, Intel 18A and Intel 14A to enable customers to develop and deliver products tailored to their specific needs.

Intel Foundry has a strong pipeline of nearly 50 customer test chips, and has engagements with almost every foundry customer in the industry on advanced packaging, including five design awards.

Intel is forecasting second-quarter 2024 revenue of $12.5 billion to $13.5 billion; expecting second-quarter EPS of $(0.05).

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T-Mobile to acquire Lumos and set up Fiber JV with EQT

T-Mobile US has formed a joint venture (JV) with EQT’s Infrastructure VI fund (EQT) that will acquire fiber-to-the-home platform Lumos from EQT’s predecessor fund EQT Infrastructure III.    

The JV will bring T-Mobile’s retail, marketing, brand and customer experience strengths together with EQT’s fiber infrastructure investment expertise. Together they will acquire Lumos’ scalable fiber network build capabilities to deliver best-in-class high-speed fiber internet connectivity to customers across the U.S. without access to fiber today. After the transaction closes, Lumos, which currently reaches 320,000 households over 7,500 route miles with fiber optic internet and home wi-fi service in the Mid-Atlantic, will transition to a wholesale model with T-Mobile as the anchor tenant owning customer relationships and leveraging its brand to attract new subscribers. The JV will focus on market identification and selection, network engineering and design, network deployment, and customer installation.

T-Mobile is expected to invest approximately $950 million in the JV to acquire a 50% equity stake and all existing fiber customers, with the funds invested by T-Mobile being used by Lumos for future fiber builds. The next capital contribution by T-Mobile out of an additional commitment of approximately $500 million is anticipated between 2027 and 2028. These combined investments are expected to allow Lumos to reach 3.5 million homes passed by the end of 2028. T-Mobile continues to expect to complete its remaining authorization for share repurchases and dividends in 2024.

The transaction is expected to close in late 2024 or early 2025.

"As the demand for reliable, low-latency connectivity rapidly increases, this deal is a scalable strategy for T-Mobile to take a significant step forward in expanding on our broadband success and continue shaking up competition in this space to bring even more value and choice to consumers,” said Mike Sievert, CEO of T-Mobile. “Together with EQT and Lumos, T-Mobile is building on our position as the fastest growing broadband provider in the country in a value-accretive way that complements our sustained growth leadership in wireless. Customers – homes and businesses – who get the fast, affordable, and reliable internet they need will be the real winners.”

https://investor.t-mobile.com/events-and-presentations/news/news-details/2024/T-Mobile-and-EQT-Announce-Joint-Venture-to-Acquire-Lumos-and-Build-Out-the-Un-carriers-First-Fiber-Footprint/default.aspx

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