The geostationary Ka-band satellite SES-17 built by Thales Alenia Space is in position over North America and ready to provide high-throughput connectivity services to the aeronautical, maritime, enterprise, and government sectors. The satellite is the first step in SES S.A.’s creation of an interoperable multi-orbit Geostationary Earth Orbit-Middle Earth Orbit fleet.
The SES-17 payload uses the fifth generation of Thales’s digital transparent processor (DTP), enabling unique features such as unlimited switching/routing and frequency conversions. The processing capacity of the DTP enables the delivery of up to ten times more throughput than traditional satellites. The DTP plus flexible amplifiers also allows SES to change the path, bandwidth, and power, to meet a customer’s changing requirements and real-time traffic demands.
“I believe that one of the most important characteristics of SES-17 is how highly flexible it is, both on the ground and in space,” said Paul Van Gelder, VP of Technology Programmes Management, SES. “On the ground, we can switch traffic between different gateways, thanks to Adaptive Resource Control (ARC), a proprietary, ground-based dynamic management platform, which allows us to detect and respond to issues to ensure the system’s availability and meet our service level agreements.” The ARC software also provides SES with the flexibility to work with all of its next-gen satellites, both in GEO and MEO, and with ground hardware infrastructure.
SES-17 anchor partner, Thales InFlyt Experience, will leverage SES-17 for FlytLive, a next-generation aviation connectivity solution enhancing WiFi experiences aboard commercial aircraft across the Americas and the Caribbean. Additionally, enterprise customers in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Canada, including SSi Canada and COMNET, will now expand the reach and capability of their broadband networks to more remote areas.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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