Ottawa-based satellite operator Telesat’s CEO Dan Goldberg told delegates to the Washington Satellite 2024 event that Telesat was not restricting its ambitions to the 198-craft Lightspeed mega-constellation of low Earth orbiting satellites. “Is 198 satellites enough? Yes, certainly to get started,” Goldberg stated. “With 198 satellites we’ll have terabytes and terabytes of fully global, highly […]

Arabsat’s CEO Alhamedi Alanezi says the satellite operator’s revenues for last year exceeded $200 million (€182.9m). Alanezi said that the company’s expansion plans could be funded from its own resources without the need to raise debt. Arabsat also announced that it has signed a MoU with Canada-based Telesat. The partnership aims to leverage Arabsat’s expertise […]

Avanti Communications has announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with satellite operators Telesat to test and develop LEO services as part of its global strategy to deliver multi-orbit solutions to customers at scale. Avanti plans to incorporate Telesat’s Lightspeed services into its network to provide affordable broadband connectivity worldwide. Telesat’s global network […]

Investment bank BNPP, in a major examination of three key satellite operators and their share prices, says SES, Eutelsat and Telesat have remained under pressure – with only Telesat making some modest headway because of its progress with its Lightspeed low Earth orbit constellation. In a self-examination of what it got right (and wrong) in […]

Analysts at Euroconsult forecast that the next decade will see some 28,700 satellites launched into space. The activity will be worth around $588 billion (€536.4bn). Activity from, Starlink, Project Kuiper, Telesat’s Lightspeed, Eutelsat/OneWeb and Chinese craft will lead the exponential growth. The analysts admit that their forecast might be an underestimate; they have included in […]

Ottawa-based satellite operator Telesat says it is ramping up its investment in its Lightspeed low Earth orbiting fleet and helped by C$2 billion (€1.3bn) of funds coming from Canadian government and provincial sources. Lightspeed, an initial 156-craft fleet and which could be extended by an extra 100 craft, is costed at C$3.5 billion. Telesat says […]

Telesat of Canada – six years since the company was granted FCC permission to access the US market on the basis that 50 per cent of its 117-satellite constellation would be in orbit – is asking for a further delay of four and a half years. The FCC issued its initial Order permitting Telesat to […]

Lightspeed is the 198 craft broadband-by-satellite scheme from Telesat of Canada. The company has outlined what it sees as the system’s key advantages, not least flying higher than the “congested” lower Earth orbits of rivals. Lightspeed has been in the planning and quotation stage for a couple of years but back in August Telesat confirmed […]

Tim Farrar of TMA Associates, a commentator on the satellite industry, has raised concerns about the “optical crosslinks” or laser beams that operate between satellites. Optical crosslinks between satellites can drastically increase the constellation’s capability to transmit data to ground stations with reduced latency and increased total throughput. Satellites no longer have to wait to […]

Ottawa-based Telesat’s recent announcement that it had awarded a 198-craft order with fellow Canadian satellite builder MDA caused considerable surprise with the former Prime Contractor and favoured supplier Thales Alenia Space. By any measure, Telesat’s challenges with the Lightspeed constellation over the past few years has been to overcome some major bumps in the road, […]