SES’s CEO Karim Michel Sabbagh says that despite its ownership of Mid-Earth Orbiting (MEO) satellite with the O3b brand, it is also actively looking at lower orbiting satellites.

He said that SES no longer thought about its GEO and MEO fleet as separate entities.

In an interview carried on the SES website with Satellite Finance, Sabbagh says: “We have to keep an open mind on new technology avenues. However, we haven’t yet seen a use case that cannot be addressed by our capabilities system as enabled through GEO and MEO and in relation to the four market segments we are focusing on. Remember, we’re not pursuing the consumer broadband market which tends to be largely associated with LEO technologies.”

“We are very focused on how we want to deploy our time and resources. When I think about video, enterprise, mobility and government, we have a unique development path through our capabilities system, particularly when accounting for the upcoming GEO and MEO launches over the 2017-2020 window.”

“Net, we will continue to look at LEO as a possible augmentation if validated. We have an open business model and an open innovation model. We are curious about how can we move the needle in terms of new capabilities we could build in the future, irrespective of the orbit. We don’t pretend to have all the answers in-house and to be able to build everything on our own. This is not the way we think about our business.”

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Categories: Articles, Broadband, DTH/Satellite, Satellite