Dear readers, I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year. May the coming year be full of opportunities, successes and prosperity for you and your family.

It has been over three years since my last post on this blog. Time seems to have flown by and blogging just fell by the wayside. My attention was drawn to many other issues, business and personal.

The coming year is shaping up to be quite transformative for Canada, the Untied States and for AurorA, Amitel and me personally. So I thought I would start with this post and see if I can do a better job going forward to informing you about events in my world.

This year will see a new administration in the United States, that promises to enact a host of de-regulation and market friendly tax and economic policies. Canada will see a new Federal Government soon with the resignation of the Prime Minister today and the people’s demand for an election which forecasts indicate will lead to a Conservative government . There will be numerous reversals of many of the Trudeau policies from the last nine years.

This will affect the broader Canadian and U.S. economies as well as the telecom sector. The FCC has already seen changes and I suspect we will see a new mandate for the CRTC in the coming months. The space industry is seeing great upheaval in both countries with the success of many new commercial entrants into the what was once strictly the domain of governments and their prime contractors. The economic changes and deregulation will also lead to expanded activity in the capital markets and we are anticipating a boom in the Mergers and Acquisition (M&A) as it has been quiet for the last few years due to the higher interest rates central bankers used to fight inflation.

So how does this affect AurorA and Amitel ? Well, AurorA has been my main business, operating in the wholesale International Telecommunications market for over 30 years. I have been in telecom all my adult life, since graduating engineering school at UWaterloo. Many of you noticed that I was posting extensively about the space sector in 2020 and 2021, especially after taking a course on the business and economics of the space sector with the incomparable Sinead O’Sullivan. Finally, opportunities were presented to me in 2020 that were oriented towards finance and business M&A.

What this means is that my business and life currently look like a Venn diagram around the intersecting circles of telecom, finance and space. I still have interest in other sectors too such as tech and mining and resources and royalties but much of that ties back to the big three circles.

Telecom has been through many changes in my lifetime. The market opportunities for AurorA are not what they were 30 years ago. The industry in Canada, the US and globally has concentrated power and traffic into the hands a small number of oligopolies. Voice traffic itself has declined globally since 2015 and continues its drop further. The time may come soon for me to consider whether to continue with AurorA. It has been on my mind for a while now. Stay tuned as we progress through 2025.

Amitel has become where most of my time and mental resources has gone lately. The Amitel retail business was sold off a decade ago. Also, no longer does Amitel provide channel sales for telecom products and services on behalf of other companies. Amitel now is where I provide consulting and expert advice to other companies. Perhaps it is best described as corporate advisory services.

Please note this disclaimer; Amitel is not a registered investment, legal or tax advisor or a broker/dealer. All investment/financial opinions expressed by Amitel are from the personal research and experience of Timo Vainionpää

Some of the projects have been in the telecom sector, some have been in the space sector. Now it has broadened out into a host of opportunities in sectors around the globe.

This late stage career pivot has been invigorating. The team of people that I work with all bring different skills and experiences to the table. The clients all bring unique and interesting issues to us that need creative solutions. It could be raising funds, looking to go public, perhaps a public company looking to go private. Some are looking to acquire other companies while others perhaps may be looking to get acquired. Each is a puzzle that I can bring not only my engineering problem solving approach to but also my decades of experience in building and operating businesses and serving on public and private company boards.

Needless to say, I am excited about 2025. I hope that you are as well as you are forecasting, planning and budgeting for the upcoming year. Watch this space for more stories from the intersection of finance, telecom and space. I endeavour to post a little more often, perhaps monthly, but I promise the next post wont be three years from now !

Cheers !

Timo