Goonhilly Earth Station Deal Safeguards Avanti’s Satellite Broadband Premises

Satellite broadband ISP Avanti, along with several other space communications firms, can rest a little easier today after landowner BT agreed a new 999-year lease for the Goonhilly Earth Station, a large telecommunications site located at Goonhilly Downs on the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall (England).

Goonhilly was owned and built by the UK Post Office from 1961 – 1984, until BT took it on after the Post Office was privatised. In 2011, GES Ltd signed an exclusive option agreement with BT to purchase the site (999 year leasehold), which included a lease-back to BT of some operational areas (including a sub-sea cable business).

But since then the plans have begun to slip and some had feared that the space communications site would ultimately run out of money and be bulldozed, which could have impacted companies like Avanti that share the on-site premises (i.e. making use of the local dish and high capacity cables to communicate with their HYLAS 1 and 2 broadband spacecraft).

Thankfully the finalised deal with BT, which is based on the original 2011 option agreement, should safeguard 50 of the operators own jobs and provide investment for the future.

Ian Jones, GES’s CEO, said (This is Cornwall):

“We have secured investment finance that secures the long term future of Goonhilly and provides a solid foundation for long-term growth. Goonhilly provides the region with one of the UK’s best space industry assets. It is well suited to provide services for commercial satellites, space science and deep space communications projects.”

As well as being a useful communications hub the site has also intended to create a “world-class space science centre” based around the theme of connecting the United Kingdom to Space, although this has been stalled due to delays with the release of a related Government Regional Growth Fund award that was approved in December 2011.