SES preps four MEO satellites for March launch

SES confirmed that four new O3b satellites have arrived safely at the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana, in preparation for launch by a Soyuz vehicle in March 2018.

The new satellites, which will be placed into orbit at a distance of 8,000km, will augment SES’s fleet of 12 O3b satellites.  The new satellites were built by Thales Alenia Space and will enable SES Networks to offer more capacity, enhanced coverage, increased efficiencies and greater reliability while delivering carrier-grade services including MEF Carrier Ethernet 2.0 certified services, to telcos, mobile network operators (MNOs), enterprises, internet service providers (ISPs) and government customers.

Steve Collar, Chief Executive Officer at SES Networks, said, ““The uptake of our O3b fleet and capability has been breathtaking. From being the fastest growing operator in 2015 to our customers demanding for more O3b services today, we are now approaching peak capacity across a number of regions. As the only operational low-latency, broadband constellation in the world, we are developing our network aggressively to deliver cloud scale connectivity and solutions. Our managed end-to-end network services are comparable with terrestrial networks, empowering our customers to offer high-performance connectivity on a truly global scale.”