Today: 8 February 2026
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Inside Cyprus’s Digital Lifeline: Internet Access on the Island and Beyond the Clouds

Inside Cyprus’s Digital Lifeline: Internet Access on the Island and Beyond the Clouds

Cablenet’s hybrid fiber-coax (HFC) network passes around 80% of premises in Cyprus. Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP) rollouts are underway with a target to reach 200,000 gigabit-capable premises nationwide. Cyprus’s four mobile network operators are Cyta (Cytamobile-Vodafone), Epic, PrimeTel, and Cablenet. By end-2022 Cyprus achieved 100% 5G coverage in populated areas, with Cyta claiming full-population 5G coverage. Starlink began regulatory clearance in Q3 2023 and is now available in Cyprus with download speeds over 100 Mbps and latency of 30–50 ms. As of 2024, Starlink hardware kit costs roughly €175 and monthly service about €50. FTTP coverage now reaches 77% of homes nationwide,
9 June 2025
LEO Gold Rush: The Billion-Dollar Race to Own Low Earth Orbit (2024–2030)

LEO Gold Rush: The Billion-Dollar Race to Own Low Earth Orbit (2024–2030)

SpaceX’s Starlink has launched over 8,000 satellites since 2019, with about 4,000 operational and service in 125+ countries serving more than 5 million users. OneWeb merged with France’s Eutelsat in 2023 to form a combined GEO+LEO operator, after launching 618 of 648 Gen1 satellites by March 2023 and planning Gen2 at around 300 satellites. Amazon’s Project Kuiper aims for 3,236 satellites, with the first operational Kuiper launch in April 2025 carrying 27 satellites and a deployment target of about 1,618 satellites by mid-2026 under an 83-launch pre-purchase deal. China’s Guowang megaconstellation targets roughly 13,000 LEO satellites by the early 2030s,
9 June 2025
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The State of Internet Access in Denmark: From Fiber to Satellite in 2025

The State of Internet Access in Denmark: From Fiber to Satellite in 2025

Fiber-to-the-premises reach about 88% of Danish households as of early 2024, up from just over 84% in mid-2023. DSL coverage has declined to around 87–89% as copper networks are retired, with full decommission planned by 2030. Hybrid fiber-coaxial cable networks upgraded to DOCSIS 3.1 now cover roughly two-thirds of households, with rural fiber reach around 90.3% of rural homes by mid-2023. 5G coverage reached 98% of populated areas by 2023, with high-band 3.5 GHz reaching about 85% of the population by mid-2023, and a 5G Standalone core activated in 2023. Denmark has 151% mobile penetration with over 9 million mobile
9 June 2025
Sky Is No Limit: Global Satcom Market Set to Soar Through 2035

Sky Is No Limit: Global Satcom Market Set to Soar Through 2035

In 2024 the global space economy reached $415 billion, with commercial satellite activities totaling about $293 billion (71%). The number of active satellites rose from about 3,300 in 2020 to over 11,500 by end-2024 due to mega-constellations. SpaceX and OneWeb have joined traditional players like Airbus, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Thales Alenia, Intelsat, SES, Eutelsat, and Inmarsat, intensifying competition. By 2035 the global satcom market could exceed $500 billion, more than 5× its 2024 size. The satellite internet access market is forecast to grow from $14.6 billion in 2024 to $312.3 billion by 2035, a ~32% CAGR, driven by Starlink and
9 June 2025
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Unlocking the Sun: Inside NASA and ESA’s Daring Missions to Touch the Solar Inferno

Unlocking the Sun: Inside NASA and ESA’s Daring Missions to Touch the Solar Inferno

Parker Solar Probe, launched August 12, 2018 on a Delta IV Heavy, became NASA’s first mission to fly through the Sun’s corona and “touch the Sun” in April 2021 when it crossed the Alfvén critical boundary during its 8th orbit. At its closest approaches Parker reaches about 3.8–4 million miles (6.2 million km) from the Sun, roughly 9 solar radii, traveling faster than 430,000 mph (700,000 km/h). The probe’s heat shield is a 4.5-inch-thick carbon-composite foam sandwich that keeps instruments near room temperature while the shield surface heats to about 2,500°F (1,377°C). Parker carries four instrument suites—FIELDS, SWEAP, IS☉IS, and
8 June 2025
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Internet Access in Cuba: From Control to Constellations

Internet Access in Cuba: From Control to Constellations

The first internet connection in Cuba was established in 1996 as a 64 Kbps link via Sprint in the United States. In 2011, with help from Venezuela, Cuba installed the ALBA-1 undersea fiber-optic cable, which became publicly usable in January 2013, replacing the old satellite backbone. From December 6–8, 2018, ETECSA rolled out mobile internet over 3G for Cuban cellphone users. By the end of 2019, an estimated 7.1 million Cubans were online in some capacity, as mobile data began to take hold. In 2023, the Arimao undersea cable, built with France’s Orange, was completed, linking Cuba to Martinique and
8 June 2025
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Space-Weather Satellites: Earth’s Cosmic Early Warning System

Space-Weather Satellites: Earth’s Cosmic Early Warning System

SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory), launched in 1995, became the first satellite to continuously observe the Sun from the Sun–Earth L1 point and carries the LASCO coronagraph, enabling CME tracking and the discovery of more than 5,000 comets. ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer), launched in 1997, and NOAA’s DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory), launched in 2015, sit at the Sun–Earth L1 to sample the solar wind and provide roughly 15 minutes to 60 minutes of advance warning of approaching CMEs. STEREO, launched in 2006, consists of two spacecraft, STEREO-A ahead of Earth and STEREO-B behind, providing stereoscopic views of solar activity;
8 June 2025
SpaceX: Comprehensive Overview of History, Technologies, Missions, and Future Plans

SpaceX: Comprehensive Overview of History, Technologies, Missions, and Future Plans

September 2008: Falcon 1 reached orbit on its fourth flight, becoming the first privately developed liquid-fuel rocket to orbit Earth. December 2008: NASA awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract to deliver cargo to the ISS. May 2012: Dragon cargo capsule became the first commercial spacecraft to rendezvous with and deliver cargo to the International Space Station. December 21, 2015: Falcon 9 first stage landed at Cape Canaveral, the world’s first orbital-class rocket to land. March 30, 2017: SpaceX re-launched a previously flown Falcon 9 booster on the SES-10 mission, the first orbital rocket reuse. May 30, 2020:
8 June 2025
The Croatian Connection: How Fast, Far, and Future-Proof Is Internet Access in 2025?

The Croatian Connection: How Fast, Far, and Future-Proof Is Internet Access in 2025?

As of 2022, Croatia had about 77% of the population as regular internet users, with 97% among youth. In cities, 86% of households have access to fast broadband, while rural areas had only about 39% in 2022. Fixed broadband uptake is roughly 75% of households, slightly below the EU average of about 78%. There is near-universal 4G/LTE coverage (about 98%), and 5G had expanded to roughly 83.4% of the country by 2023, though coverage remains denser in urban areas. HT holds about 59% of fixed broadband subscriptions in 2024, with A1 around 25–30% and Telemach about 10–15%. HT added 150,000
8 June 2025
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Côte d’Ivoire’s Internet Revolution: Fiber Optics, 5G Dreams, and Satellite Solutions

Côte d’Ivoire’s Internet Revolution: Fiber Optics, 5G Dreams, and Satellite Solutions

As of 2024, about 53.4% of Ivorians live in urban areas, while urban internet usage is roughly 50% compared with 22% in rural areas. Côte d’Ivoire has laid over 5,200 km of fiber under the RNHD backbone, targeting nearly 7,000 km by September 2025. The country is connected to the ACE and WACS submarine cables, and the 2Africa mega-cable is expected to land in 2023–2024, adding about 180 Tbps design capacity. By 2023, about 92% of Ivorians had access to at least one 4G network. MTN Côte d’Ivoire began 5G trials in 2021 and launched first 5G sites in late
8 June 2025
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Eyes on the Infinite: The Next Generation of Space Telescopes Set to Rewrite the Cosmos

Eyes on the Infinite: The Next Generation of Space Telescopes Set to Rewrite the Cosmos

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is planned to launch in late 2026 (latest commitment by May 2027) aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy to a halo orbit around the Sun-Earth L2, about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. Roman uses a 2.4-meter primary mirror repurposed from Hubble and a 300-megapixel Wide Field Instrument that covers about 0.28 square degrees, enabling sky surveys roughly 1,000 times faster than Hubble. Its Coronagraph Instrument aims to directly image exoplanets and disks by suppressing starlight with deformable mirrors, potentially detecting planets a billion times fainter than their stars. Roman’s microlensing survey is expected to find over
8 June 2025
Cosmic Time Machine: The Jaw-Dropping Science Unleashed by the James Webb Space Telescope

Cosmic Time Machine: The Jaw-Dropping Science Unleashed by the James Webb Space Telescope

JWST launched on December 25, 2021, aboard an ESA Ariane 5 rocket to the Sun-Earth L2 point, reaching about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth in January 2022. Its 6.5-meter segmented gold-coated beryllium primary mirror consists of 18 hexagonal segments, each about 1.32 meters across and roughly 20 kilograms, designed to fold for launch. JWST uses a five-layer Kapton sunshield measuring roughly 21 by 14 meters to keep the optics around 40 kelvin, while the MIRI instrument operates at about 7 kelvin with a dedicated cryocooler. JWST carries four main instruments: NIRCam (0.6-5 μm; 4-megapixel arrays and wavefront sensing), NIRSpec (0.6-5
7 June 2025
Internet Access in Comoros: From Island Gaps to Satellite Signals

Internet Access in Comoros: From Island Gaps to Satellite Signals

The Union of the Comoros comprises Grande Comore (Ngazidja), Anjouan (Ndzuwani), Mohéli (Mwali) and the Mayotte territory, with island geography that complicates terrestrial network rollout. Submarine cables have transformed connectivity: EASSy landed in Moroni in 2010–2011, AVASSA was completed in 2016, and FLY-LION3 landed at Itsandra, Moroni in 2019, creating three major international links. Internally, AVASSA connects Grande Comore and Anjouan (Mohéli is linked by microwave), while a Comoros Domestic Cable System (CDCS) is planned and Comoros Cables manages open wholesale access for both carriers. Fixed broadband remains scarce, with about 3,000 fixed broadband subscriptions in 2023 (roughly 0.3 per
7 June 2025
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Hyperspectral Eyes in the Sky: How Space-Based Imaging Is Revolutionizing Earth Observation

Hyperspectral Eyes in the Sky: How Space-Based Imaging Is Revolutionizing Earth Observation

NASA’s Hyperion, launched in 2000 on the EO-1 satellite, collected 220 spectral bands from 400 to 2500 nm at 30 m resolution. A hyperspectral data cube stacks hundreds of narrow wavelength bands for every ground pixel, creating a two-dimensional spatial image plus a spectral dimension. Hyperspectral imaging records hundreds of narrow bands (often 10 nm or less) enabling identification of materials by their spectral fingerprints, unlike RGB’s 3 broad bands or multispectral’s 5–30 bands. Space-based hyperspectral sensors are typically passive, in sun-synchronous low Earth orbits, and commonly use pushbroom scanning to build full images with high signal-to-noise ratio. The VNIR-SWIR
7 June 2025
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Starlink Global Coverage and Availability Report

Starlink Global Coverage and Availability Report

As of mid-2025, Starlink is available in over 110 countries and territories. In the United States, Starlink began with limited trials in August 2020 and the public beta “Better Than Nothing Beta” in November 2020, and now has nationwide commercial coverage including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with over 2.5 million subscribers as of early 2025. Canada went live in January 2021 after a late-2020 beta and now has broad coverage across all provinces. Mexico received a license in mid-2021, began service by November 2021, and by 2024 had over 160,000 subscribers, with the federal “Internet para Todos”
7 June 2025
No Signal: The Shocking Digital Divide in the DRC and the Race to Connect Millions

No Signal: The Shocking Digital Divide in the DRC and the Race to Connect Millions

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has a population of over 100 million, but only about 27% were using the internet in early 2024, leaving roughly 75 million offline. <li Internet users rose from 1.4 million in 2013 to 28.9 million in 2023, with mobile internet subscribers jumping about 40% over three years. <li As of 2025, only 9,361 km of fiber has been laid, far short of the 50,000 km target in Horizon 2025, covering about 19% of the plan. <li The DRC’s four major mobile operators—Vodacom, Airtel, Orange, and Africell—dominate the market, with 3G/4G in major cities and
7 June 2025
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Satellite Imagery: Principles, Applications, and Future Trends

Satellite Imagery: Principles, Applications, and Future Trends

The first space images were captured in 1946 from a sub-orbital U.S. V-2 rocket at about 105 km altitude. The first actual satellite photograph of Earth was taken on August 14, 1959 by the U.S. Explorer 6 satellite. In 1960, TIROS-1 transmitted the first television image of Earth from orbit, a milestone for weather observation. Landsat 1, launched in 1972, began the longest-running civilian Earth-observation program with a 50-year archive, and Landsat 9 was launched in 2021 to continue it. The KH-11 KENNEN program began near-real-time digital imaging in 1977, eliminating the need for film return. IKONOS, launched in 1999,
7 June 2025
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Sky Scanners: How SAR Imaging Satellites Are Redefining Earth Observation

Sky Scanners: How SAR Imaging Satellites Are Redefining Earth Observation

About 75% of the planet is obscured by cloud cover or darkness at any moment, making optical imaging inaccessible. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites actively illuminate the ground with microwave radar and synthesize a large aperture by moving the antenna to produce high-resolution images. SAR can operate day or night and in all weather, providing 24/7 imaging. Sentinel-1 (ESA) comprises satellites Sentinel-1A launched in 2014 and Sentinel-1B in 2016, with C-band SAR offering ~5 m resolution in high-resolution modes and 250–400 km swaths, and a 12-day revisit. RADARSAT-2 (Canada) launched in 2007, followed by the RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) in
7 June 2025
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Satellite Phones: Comprehensive Global FAQ

Iridium operates about 66 LEO satellites at roughly 780 km, offering truly global coverage including the poles with a one-way latency around 0.1–0.2 seconds. Inmarsat uses 3–4 GEO satellites at about 35,786 km, delivering near-global coverage (roughly ±70° latitude) with about 0.5 second latency, and IsatPhone 2 offers up to 8 hours of talk and 160 hours of standby. Thuraya, based in the UAE, operates 2 GEO satellites covering roughly 160 countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia, with XT-LITE priced around $650. Globalstar currently operates a Gen2 constellation of 24 LEO satellites at about 1,414 km,
7 June 2025
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Starlink Satellite Internet FAQ

Starlink Satellite Internet FAQ

Starlink is SpaceX’s satellite-based broadband internet service, and by 2025 the constellation has launched over 7,500 satellites with about 6,750 active in orbit. The satellites orbit in low Earth orbit at roughly 550 km altitude, delivering typical download speeds of 50–200+ Mbps and latency around 20–40 ms. SpaceX began launching Starlink in 2019, and by early 2025 it served more than 5 million customers in 125+ countries. The residential Starlink kit costs about $599 in many regions, with US promotions as low as $349, and monthly service typically $90–$120, with occasional $0 hardware deals tied to multi-month commitments. There are
7 June 2025
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Stock Market Today

BAE Systems share price: Buyback update and Launchpad incubator set up Feb 18 results

BAE Systems share price: Buyback update and Launchpad incubator set up Feb 18 results

8 February 2026
London, Feb 8, 2026, 08:54 GMT — Market closed. BAE Systems plc (BAES.L) shares last closed up 1.2% at 1,879 pence on Friday, with about 5.6 million shares traded. The London Stock Exchange is shut on Sunday and the stock will reopen on Monday. (Investing.com) That next session lands with BAE’s full-year results due on Feb. 18, a date investors treat as the next real price setter. Traders are watching for guidance on 2026 sales and cash flow, and how much cash the group plans to send back to shareholders. (investors.baesystems.com) BAE has also put a new idea on the
Barclays share price jumps into earnings week: what to watch before Tuesday’s results

Barclays share price jumps into earnings week: what to watch before Tuesday’s results

8 February 2026
Barclays shares closed up 2.71% at 479.1 pence on Friday, ahead of full-year results and a targets update due Tuesday. Barclays and NatWest have both submitted offers for Evelyn Partners, with a deal announcement possible this week, according to Reuters. Mary Francis will retire from the Barclays board in May. Investors are watching for signals on costs, credit quality, and capital returns.
Rolls-Royce share price ends week higher on buyback update as RR.L eyes turn to results

Rolls-Royce share price ends week higher on buyback update as RR.L eyes turn to results

8 February 2026
Rolls-Royce Holdings shares closed at 1,229p on Friday, up 1.78%, as the FTSE 100 gained 0.59%. The company reported buying 742,570 shares on Feb. 5 as part of its £200 million buyback, bringing total repurchases to 12.66 million shares. Rolls-Royce will attend the World Defense Show in Riyadh, noting over 80% of its Saudi workforce are nationals.
Vodafone share price: Buyback kicks off, but Germany recovery is the next test for VOD.L

Vodafone share price: Buyback kicks off, but Germany recovery is the next test for VOD.L

8 February 2026
Vodafone (VOD.L) bought 27.1 million shares this week as its new buyback began, with the stock closing Friday up 1.47% at 110.6p after a sharp drop the day before. Investors remain focused on Germany’s service-revenue growth and the pace of buybacks ahead of Monday’s open. The company maintained full-year guidance after reporting 5.4% group service revenue growth in Q3, with Germany up 0.7%.
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