- UK wireless tech company Filtronic is benefitting from its strategic partnership with Elon Musk’s SpaceX
- The British vendor has a five-year deal to supply amplifiers to SpaceX for its Starlink low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites
- SpaceX has already placed initial purchase orders for Filtronic’s E-band solid state power amplifier designed for use in LEO data communications and pledged to an ‘order flow’ over the coming years
- Filtronic’s share price has ramped up and the company now expects its financial performance to be ‘ahead of current market expectation’ for the current fiscal year
It’s not often we get to report on a British communications network technology success story, so as summer gently dwindles and the season of ‘mists and mellow fruitfulness’ (aka autumn) starts to take hold, it’s a delight to see that a small wireless networking vendor based in the north-east of England has developed technology that is set to play a pivotal role in the low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband deployments currently underway by Starlink, part of Elon Musk’s SpaceX enterprise.
That vendor is Sedgefield, County Durham-based Filtronic, a specialist in the development, design and manufacture of wireless communications technologies (including radio frequency, microwave and mmWave), which in April this year signed a strategic partnership agreement with SpaceX for the supply of E-band solid state power amplifier (SSPA) technology to be used on the Starlink satellites, which are delivering broadband services to users in areas that are hard to reach by terrestrial network operators.
