Telefónica, Telesat Say LEO Tests Delivered Better-than-GEO Results

Telesat’s LEO constellation orbit. Photo: Telesat

Telefónica International Wholesale Services (TIWS) has completed live in-orbit testing across Telesat’s Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) Phase 1 satellite. The companies said in a Thursday announcement that the testing demonstrated Telesat LEO could be a viable option for wireless backhaul. They called it a substantial performance improvement over Geostationary (GEO) links, without the use of compression or TCP protocol acceleration techniques that are typically required in 650 ms latency GEO environments.

The applications tested over Telesat LEO resulted in observed round trip latency of 30-60 msec without any packet loss. Test scenarios included: High definition video streaming without interruption; video conference with teams, with user experience matching terrestrial and cellular connections; remote desktop connection to manage a remote computer; and VPN connection without any delay or outages.

“As we plan, design and build our offerings to provide best-in-class connectivity for our customers, we are eager to explore how cutting-edge technologies like Telesat LEO can integrate with our global connectivity infrastructure,” said Gustavo Arditti, TIWS Satellite Business Unit director.  “Across every application tested, Telesat LEO delivered an outstanding performance, with significant improvements over what we can achieve via GEO satellites today.”