Spacecom

Space Communications Ltd. (Spacecom), founded in 1993 and headquartered in Ramat Gan, Israel, is Israel's primary commercial geostationary satellite operator, providing broadcast distribution, broadband internet, and enterprise telecommunications services through the AMOS (AMOSat) satellite fleet positioned at orbital slots serving Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Eastern United States.

Spacecom's AMOS fleet has historically occupied the 4°W orbital slot over the Atlantic Ocean — a premium position providing simultaneous visibility of both the Eastern United States and Europe, enabling transoceanic content distribution that requires coverage of both continents. AMOS-6, ordered by Facebook to support internet connectivity in sub-Saharan Africa for the internet.org initiative, was destroyed in September 2016 when the Falcon 9 rocket carrying it exploded on the launch pad during a pre-launch test — a total loss estimated at $200 million insured value. AMOS-17, launched in 2019 on a SpaceX Falcon 9, replaced lost capacity with a high-throughput Ka-band payload providing broadband services across Africa at dramatically higher capacity than previous AMOS satellites.

Spacecom's primary revenue streams include: video broadcasting distribution for Israeli and international TV broadcasters using Ku-band transponders to relay content to cable headends and DTH dish subscribers; broadband VSAT services for enterprise customers, government agencies, and ISPs in Israel, Eastern Europe, and Africa; and government/military secure communications services leveraging dedicated transponder capacity.

SKY Perfect JSAT (Japan's largest commercial satellite operator) acquired a controlling stake in Spacecom in 2017, followed by additional shareholding transactions, embedding Spacecom within the SKY Perfect JSAT group's global satellite capacity strategy. Spacecom competes with Intelsat, SES, and Eutelsat in the European-Middle East satellite capacity market.