SES extends maritime partnership with Orange
August 3, 2021
By Chris Forrester
Satellite operator SES has announced an extension of its partnership with Orange to serve maritime customers with digital broadband services.
“With this innovative agreement, Orange will integrate its own global infrastructure with the global network coverage powered by SES Networks’ Skala Global Platform. Together it will enable Orange maritime customers to cost-effectively scale up their bandwidth with seamless, ubiquitous and global services. This will ensure they can implement new technologies onboard that take advantage of IoT and AI, as well as edge and cloud applications,” said a joint statement.
“The combination of the Orange secured and digital network infrastructure and SES Networks’ Skala Global Platform – a next-generation technology platform which provides worldwide coverage via multiple geostationary satellites and gateways interconnected by a global terrestrial network – will deliver reliable, high-performance broadband services everywhere, from developed markets to the hardest-to-reach places on Earth. This confirms the Orange ambition to become a key player offering solutions for the maritime sector,” says the pair.
“The maritime industry is on the threshold of rapid technological change, challenging shipping companies to incorporate a wide range of digital solutions to remain competitive. Shipping fleet operators need to implement automation and digitalisation of onboard processes to ensure optimum performance, efficiency and reliability,” states the statement.
This latest agreement further strengthens the partnership that the Orange Group and SES Networks have established in the last few years. Orange has leveraged SES’ innovative O3b satellite constellation operating in medium earth orbit (MEO) as well as SES’ geostationary satellites to deliver global fibre-like, low-latency services to their mining customers. Orange has also been using SES’s MEO and GEO services to provide international connectivity where needed and to deploy cellular services across remote areas of Africa. Orange is also the first announced network operator to adopt O3b mPOWER, SES’s next-generation MEO system, which is planned for commercial service availability in the second half of 2022.
SES announces its H1 results on August 4th.