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Kacific plans expansion

January 3, 2019

Kacific is a satellite operator concentrating its resources on most of the Pacific islands, stretching from Indonesia and the Philippines in the West to Tonga and Guam, French Polynesia, New Zealand in the South and East Pacific. According to a report in trade publication Space News, the embryonic business is now planning a significant expansion.

Kacific is already providing interim connectivity to the region using leased capacity on a number of satellites, but later this year it will launch its first dedicated satellite (Kacific-1) which is a shared so-called condominium satellite with Japan’s JCSAT-18 and to be launched by SpaceX.

Founded by Christian Patouraux and Mark Rigolle (both formally with SES/O3b) in 2013 the business has enjoyed remarkable success. It has firm contracts in place with Tuvalu Telecommunications, Solomon (Islands) Telekom, Vanuatu (where it has its head office) and Kiribati. In 2015 Indonesia’s BigNet signed a long-term contract with Kacific.

This early business has helped create a capacity backlog worth $618 million, and with many of the company’s leased spot-beams already filled. Kacific-1, when launched, will carry 56 dedicated Ka-band spot beams.

The buoyant picture is encouraging Kacific to expand from today’s staff roster of some 20 to 40-45 by mid-year.

There’s also planning underway for Kacific-2 which is likely to be wholly owned by the company, and which the company’s senior management says would exploit and build upon its first-mover advantage in the region.

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