ViaSat’s Moore Discusses Future of Space-Based Internet Service, High-Tech Jobs Grew Last Year, CommNexus Absorbs EvoNexus Incubator, & More San Diego BizTech News

Last week’s tech industry news underscored the diversity of innovation in the San Diego area. We’ve got it all wrapped up for you here, from satellite-based Internet service to electric motorcycles, Web 2.0, and electromagnetic railguns.

—Carlsbad, CA-based ViaSat (NASDAQ: [[ticker:VSAT]]) will be launching its first satellite, ViaSat-1, in mid-May as part of the company’s strategy to diversify by providing satellite-based Internet service to customers in rural and low-density areas throughout the U.S. ViaSat’s Tom Moore, who is a co-founder and CEO of ViaSat subsidiary WildBlue Communications, told me that ViaSat sees additional opportunities for satellite-based Internet service in Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Africa.

—San Diego’s high-tech industry added 500 jobs from 2008 to 2009, for a total of 111,000, according to a nationwide “cybercities” report issued last week by TechAmerica. San Diego was one of only seven cybercities to add jobs in 2009, which is the latest year that data is available. San Diego’s largest high-tech sector was R&D and testing labs, which employed 28,600 workers in 2009, according to TechAmerica. Telecommunications services followed, with 8,600 workers, and computer systems design and related services was third, with 16,500 workers. San Diego ranked first in the United States in consumer electronics manufacturing, with 2,900 jobs.

—General Atomics, the private government contractor in San Diego, has been participating in efforts by Office of Naval Research to develop an

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.