As it has become tradition, in our February issue of Via Satellite we announce the nominees for our Satellite Executive of the Year. This is the most prestigious individual award in our industry, and choosing a winner is never easy. We have six great contenders for the award; so, on behalf of the Via Satellite team, we would like to offer our congratulations to Stéphane Israël, chairman and CEO of Arianespace; Mark Dankberg, chairman and CEO of ViaSat; Yuri Prokhorov director general of the Russian Satellite Communications Company (RSCC); Jeff Tarr, president and CEO of DigitalGlobe; Pierre-Jean Beylier, CEO of SpeedCast; and Nathan Kundtz, CEO and president of Kymeta who have been nominated for the award. It promises to be a close race, and picking one winner from these six will not be easy given they have all had outstanding achievements in 2016.

Cybersecurity is a topic that is coming up more and more in our industry, although you could argue it probably is in most industries. In Via Satellite this year, we will be looking at this topic a lot more than in year’s past and hopefully from a number of different perspectives. We know it can directly impact space-based assets, but also those on the ground, as well as key verticals such as aero where satellite companies play a key role in providing in-flight connectivity. This will be a recurring theme throughout 2017 for us and we kick things off with the first of what is likely to be a series of articles on cybersecurity this year.

We are now counting down the days to SATELLITE 2017, which will be more eagerly awaited than ever this year. With the industry facing a number of challenges and a number of the main FSS operators seeing very little, if any growth, the onus will be on how the industry can exploit new opportunities while not losing ground in traditionally strong verticals. There should be some great debates; We look forward to seeing you there. VS