SES/O3b win major Orange contract
February 27, 2020
By Chris Forrester
O3b, the Medium Earth orbiting satellite system owned by SES, has won a major contract from telco Orange to serve its 18 African countries with connectivity.
O3b’s mPOWER satellite system will help Orange to exponentially ramp up its consumer and business services, starting in the Central African Republic.
The current O3b constellation comprises 20 satellites, with another batch due to launch in 2021. The new generation of satellites will be ultra-sophisticated and carry software-defined on-board routing. It is the world’s only fully-funded non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) broadband system in development today. Positioned at 8,000 kilometres away from Earth, the system will power low-latency high-throughput solutions that can be seamlessly integrated into existing terrestrial networks.
SES said when fully operational in 2022, O3b mPOWER will provide multiple terabits of throughput globally to drive digital transformation and cloud adoption virtually anywhere on the planet.
“The highly flexible O3b mPOWER constellation comprises ultra-high-capacity, low-latency, high-power MEO satellites, each with up to 5,000 fully-shapeable and steerable beams that can be shifted and scaled in real-time to meet customers’ demands. The system is ideally suited for domestic cellular backhaul and simultaneous international IP trunking applications,” adds SES.
Orange has been using O3b capacity since 2017 and is a strategic partner with SES.
“This new agreement marks a very important milestone for both our companies and also for the broader industry. With the innovative O3b mPOWER system, Orange and SES are revolutionising the telco market, and the way networks can be extended and improved,” said JP Hemingway, CEO/SES Networks. “With its ability to power a wide range of telecommunications needs, including cellular backhaul and high-performance cloud connectivity, O3b mPOWER – together with other terrestrial infrastructure – is key to connecting remote and underserved regions in the most economically viable way.”