The big interviews keep coming for Via Satellite. This year, we have bought you in-depth conversations with the likes of Sunil Bharti Mittal of OneWeb and Dan Goldberg of Telesat, who spoke respectively about their ambitious plans for developing Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) networks.

This month, we bring you another major interview with one of the most interesting companies in our sector. It is arguable whether any company garnered more headlines than Speedcast in recent years (SpaceX, I know, but nevertheless). Speedcast made acquisition after acquisition as it tried to propel itself to become one of the giants of the satellite industry. However, the company hit a spot of trouble and filed for Chapter 11, and the CEO responsible for a huge number of the acquisitions, Pierre-Jean Beylier, left the company. Now, Speedcast is ready to bounce back. My colleague Rachel Jewett has a fascinating interview with new Speedcast CEO Joe Spytek about the company as it comes out of bankruptcy and looks to chart a new course.

Also in this month’s edition, I take a closer look at the maritime sector and talk to some key end users. We hear from the likes of John Padgett, chief experience officer of Carnival Cruise Line, and many others about the challenges the sector has faced. We talk to a mix of end users about their connectivity challenges.

Finally, we welcome back freelancer Marisa Torrieri with a piece on software-defined satellites, a topic that gets more and more attention in our industry.

Speaking of LEO, we have a big Digital LEO Forum coming in April featuring the CEOs of the top satellite operators and key players in the LEO arena. We have end users from the likes of Maersk, Air Canada, Swiss Re, and Aeromexico taking part. There is still time to register.

I continue to wish you safe health and a good start to this year. As more and more of us get vaccinated, there is some light at the end of the COVID tunnel. We miss you, and even though we have some great digital events coming up, we hope we can see you all again soon.