Telesat has effectively restored the 25% of commercial Lightspeed capacity it diverted to the fast-growing defense market by greenlighting plans to expand the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation to 225 satellites. That’s good news for enterprise and mobility users, including in aviation, where Telesat sees “huge opportunities.”
The Canadian satellite operator previously expected to operate Lightspeed with an initial 156 satellites, and use the cash flow from the network to fund its expansion. But after recently winning a C$2.3 billion contract to deliver secure Military Ka-band (Mil-Ka) Arctic connectivity to the Canadian Armed Forces under the so-called Enhanced Satellite Communications Project – Polar (ESCP-P) program, it bolstered the tally by 69 Lightspeed satellites to a total of 225.
“So with this deal with ESCP-P, we’re able to restore the 25% of commercial capacity that we had diverted for the defense market,” Telesat president and CEO Dan Goldberg confirmed during the firm’s second quarter earnings conference call.
He explained:
We didn’t want to reduce our capacity that could support those commercial verticals, like broadband connectivity for the airline industry, broadband connectivity for the maritime sector, broadband connectivity for rural broadband, enterprise users around the world and the like.
Moreover, these additional satellites are in fact what “we always knew the market would need” and will mean “more resiliency, more redundancy, better performance of the network. So it was just a big win-win-win,” Goldberg enthused.
Telesat has moved with speed to lay the groundwork for the planned expansion. It has already inked a firm contract with MDA Space for the 69 additional satellites and secured almost all the launch capacity it needs. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will play a key role in Lightspeed’s buildout.
“Obviously SpaceX launches at a very rapid cadence. We’re very focused on getting the constellation deployed as quickly as possible. So that’s the right launch vehicle for Lightspeed,” Goldberg said, calling Falcon 9 “super reliable.”
Telesat is now rocketing towards a Q1 2028 go-live date for global Lightspeed coverage.
Having taken a B2B approach to the inflight connectivity market, it is working with integrators and aero ISPs.
Viasat, for one, already has a substantial multi-year agreement with Telesat to use Lightspeed for a range of services, including to support its new GEO/LEO broadband connectivity for commercial airlines. It will offer the multi-orbit service over its current gimbaled aero antenna as well as a future dual-beam electronically steered antenna (ESA).
Elsewhere on the hardware front, Telesat’s partner, Farcast — in which it holds an equity stake — recently conducted a successful over-the-air demonstration of its ESA technology using Telesat’s LEO 3 test satellite. Farcast’s innovative architecture reduces size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C) for terminals.
“Farcast successfully established and maintained end-to-end satellite connectivity through its shared-aperture user terminal, with measured performance closely matching predicted link budgets,” Telesat said of the San Francisco-based start-up, which is contracted to provide an enterprise-class Lightspeed user terminal that is fully integrated with the Lightspeed modem.
“The results provide strong validation of the underlying terminal technology,” Ottawa-based Telesat continued. “This milestone paves the way for the next phase of the collaboration: the development of a fully integrated user terminal for the Telesat Lightspeed network, bringing together Farcast’s antenna platform and the Telesat Lightspeed modem solution.”
Some operators which presently utilize ThinKom Solutions’ Ka2517 VICTS antenna for GEO-powered IFC are also eyeing how the hardware can support multi-orbit functionality in the future by combining both GEO and Lightspeed LEO.
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Featured image credited to istock.com/Clare Bonthrone
