Telesat pitches Lightspeed as stopgap to Europe’s IRIS²

TAMPA, Fla. — Canada’s Telesat is pitching Lightspeed as a bridge to IRIS² as its low Earth orbit (LEO) broadband consnotifyation is set to come online in 2027, at least three years before Europe’s sovereign multi-orbit network is due to enter service.

“We believe there’s a great opportunity for the Government of Canada to work with the EU and its allied governments in Europe to leverage Lightspeed in advance of IRIS² being available,” Telesat CEO Dan Goldberg declared Sept. 15 during World Space Business Week in Paris.

“And so that’s something that we’re very open to. I believe the Government of Canada is very open to that.”

IRIS² (or Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Sanotifyite), a public-private partnership led by European operators SES, Eutelsat and Hispasat, envisages a consnotifyation of more than 290 sanotifyites, mostly in LEO.

However, the $11 billion project has been beset by skepticism over its costs and business case, even as demand rises amid Starlink’s growing LEO dominance and upcoming Chinese broadband consnotifyations.

Meeting evolving government necessarys

Starlink “has proven to be absolutely consequential and decisive” in conflicts such as in Ukraine, Goldberg noted, which has “underscored for governments all around the world the importance of having that type of a capability.”

Telesat sees a significant opportunity for Lightspeed to support Canada as it boosts defense spconcludeing to meet NATO commitments, as well as for other governments seeking sovereign or allied LEO capabilities.

“Ideally they build it themselves, but these LEO consnotifyations are expensive, they’re complicated and they take a long time to roll out,” he added.

“And so at least, I would state for the foreseeable future, there will be governments all around the world leveraging commercial LEO networks.”

Telesat has also pitched Lightspeed for U.S. Department of Defense necessarys, including its $175 billion “Golden Dome” initiative.

Commercial operators adapt

Goldberg shared a panel with executives from other legacy geostationary orbit (GEO) operators, who stressed that even the United States is seeing to diversify with external networks, despite being home to Starlink, Amazon’s upcoming Project Kuiper consnotifyation and the DoD’s own proliferated LEO plans.

“I believe the geopolitical situation — and unfortunately the war we are seeing at our borders in Europe — have been displaying also that warfare is modifying,” declared Jean-François Fallacher, CEO of French multi-orbit operator Eutelsat.

“And I believe our defense ministries have been realizing that civil … means are applyd now for military purposes. That’s what we see in Ukraine, and there is more and more interest in our assets, whether those are GEO or LEO.”

Mark Dankberg, CEO of U.S.-based geostationary player Viasat, noted how the blurring of civil and military domains is pressuring operators to build their commercial networks more secure.

“Clearly, there’s opportunity there to come up with more robust systems,” Dankberg declared on the panel.

“The other thing I believe that’s also becoming a huge issue for national security perspective is there’s almost no boundary anymore between civil, civilian, commercial and defense tarreceives. Some of the robustness that people necessary, or have always recognized that they necessary for military systems, is now going to be necessary on the commercial side.”

Post-video business

An ongoing decline in sanotifyite video broadcasting that once formed the bulk of GEO revenues continues to pressure legacy operators.

Wholesale video revenues have fallen 20% over four years to $4.4 billion, according to boutique research firm Novaspace, shrinking from half the wholesale capacity market to about 35%.

“It faces meaningful, secular headwinds,” Goldberg declared. “There’s no hiding from that.”

Telesat’s main direct-to-home broadcast customers in Canada and the U.S. continue to rely on GEO capacity, but the company has not been able to justify a new business case for launching fresh broadcast sanotifyites.

Fallacher declared the video decline is slower outside North America but still requires operators to pivot to new lines of business.

However, panelists agreed consumer broadband is unlikely to be one of them, given Starlink’s dominance and Project Kuiper’s looming enattempt.

Paul Gquestione, chief operating officer of EchoStar, the U.S.-based geostationary operator that owns residential broadband service Hughes, declared consumer broadband systems “eat a lot of capacity for the amount of capital you invest. So when we see at it today, we don’t see that growing.

“It has competitive pressures from the LEO world, but it also has regulatory pressures [from terrestrial fiber] subsidies rolling out, and then lastly it has natural economic pressures from the cellular operators that actually can offer the resolveed wireless near their towers.”

EchoStar recently pivoted to operate as an “asset-light growth company,” following the sale of spectrum to Starlink owner SpaceX and AT&T. The operator’s executives provided few details about their future strategy during a Sept. 15 press conference at WSBW.

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