Avanti is one of those operators that refuses to die quietly. Born in London two decades ago, they were early to gamble on Ka-band from GEO, branded it “HYLAS,” and never quite managed to scale beyond a modest four-satellite fleet. For years they’ve been hovering in that uncomfortable middle tier, too small to scare SES or Viasat, too big to vanish into the weeds like the dozens of regional resellers that quietly rebadge capacity.

Their satellites work, and they’ve carved out a real niche in Africa, flogging rural connectivity and mining links where fiber either doesn’t exist or keeps getting dug up by accident. Nigeria in particular has been their laboratory, where they claim to have connected half a million people in the kind of places telcos avoid. They also like to market themselves as government-grade secure, but at the end of the day they’re leasing Ka-band beams from GEO, fibre-like performance only if you’ve never actually used fiber.

The new shtick is “multi-orbit.” They’re still flying the same four GEO platforms, but now they talk as if they’ve suddenly joined the LEO race. In practice, that means capacity-sharing and partnerships, not a secret Avanti constellation waiting in the wings. It’s survival branding, not reinvention. Cornwall’s spaceport office is the same thing: a way to wrap themselves in the Union Jack of “UK space sector” credibility while the real action (launches, constellations, sovereign satcom programs) happens elsewhere.

Avanti’s strength is also its weakness: they know how to squeeze value from under-served markets, but they’re permanently capped by scale. The company walked off the London exchange years ago after disappointing investors, and they’ve since leaned on being the plucky enabler of “connectivity inclusion” in places SES and Eutelsat don’t care to bother with.

If the UK government ever decides it needs a home-grown satcom champion again, Avanti will wave the flag. Until then, they’ll keep patching rural networks in Africa and mining camps with Ka-band beams, while pretending they’re part of the multi-orbit future.