Telesat focuses on Africa
March 2, 2022
By Chris Forrester
Ottawa-based satellite operator Telesat, which is planning a low Earth orbiting constellation called Lightspeed, and says it has signed with Liquid Intelligent Technologies for a strategic cooperation agreement for Telesat’s Lightspeed services in Africa.
Liquid Intelligent Technologies is part of Cassava Technologies, a pan-African fibre network group.
As part of the agreement, the companies will closely collaborate on the commercial and technical aspects of integrating the Telesat Lightspeed enterprise-grade, high-throughput, low-latency satellite network with Liquid’s global value-added services network. This integration can enable the expansion of Liquid’s enterprise portfolio offerings, including next-generation cloud services, managed security services, business Wi-Fi and data centre connectivity.
At the same time, Telesat will explore combining Liquid’s landing stations, Points of Presences (PoPs), site hosting, management services, and fibre network as part of its global terrestrial infrastructure that seamlessly integrates with the Telesat Lightspeed satellite network.
“Liquid’s terrestrial infrastructure in Africa is second to none, from the largest fibre network spanning over 100,000 kms to state-of-the-art teleports and access to diverse points-of-presence within the continent,” said Glenn Katz, Telesat’s CCO. “We’re eager to explore the synergies between both of our company’s offerings, with confidence that we will establish a ‘win-win’ for our organisations and the future of connectivity for Africa.”
“Telesat Lightspeed will be the world’s most advanced LEO network, delivering the enterprise-grade, fibre-like connectivity that Africa’s massively underserved market needs,” said Scott Mumford, Liquid Satellite Services CEO. “Integrating ubiquitous, multi-gigabit per second links with guaranteed SLA’s from Telesat Lightspeed will enable Liquid to expand their award-winning services via an untethered network in the sky, and deliver expanded service offerings to our customers not possible through the current satellite-based offerings.”
This is good news for Telesat, but the company – despite planning for Lightspeed’s 298 satellites – has yet to confirm launch dates for the Lightspeed fleet. Thales Alenia is building the satellites.