United Kingdom: Goonhilly, a UK Company, Purchases Two Comsat Teleports in the US

Goonhilly, a UK ground station operator, has purchased two teleports in the US. Satcom Direct's SD Government and Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd. this week stated that they had agreed for the UK company to purchase the Comsat teleports located in Southbury, Connecticut and Santa Paula, California. The agreement's terms were kept confidential. Goonhilly will manage and run the recently purchased East and West coast US ground stations while collaborating strategically with SD to support its satcom services. Goonhilly closed in 2008 after being established in 1962 and was formerly owned by BT. The site, which is in Cornwall, was acquired by Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd in 2014. The new owners raised $31.8 million from billionaire Peter Hargreaves to erect deep space antennas and create the first private deep space communications network. A 21,500-square-foot customer-accessible data facility is run by the teleport and opened in 2019. 

Comsat has run the two teleports in the US since 1976. The two teleports are a part of the Comsat Mobile branch, which the US government formed in 1963. In 2000, Lockheed Martin bought Comsat, which it later sold to Telenor. The next year, Apax Partners bought Telenor Satellite Services, renamed it Vizada, and sold it to the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS, later known as Airbus). In 2016, Satcom Direct Communications, Inc. purchased Airbus DS SatCom Government, rebranding the division Satcom Direct Government while continuing to operate under the "Comsat" moniker to honour its past as a component of Comsat Mobile. While it has sold its teleports, SD still runs a 25,000-square-foot data centre in Brevard County, Florida.