Intelsat Evolves New Satellites With Open Architecture EpicNG Platform

   The Intelsat EpicNG satellite series will be deployed for wireless and fixed telecommunications, enterprise, mobility, video and government applications requiring broadband infrastructure across major continents. The complementary overlay platform utilizes multiple frequency bands, wide beams, spot beams and frequency reuse technology and will be fully integrated with the operator’s existing satellite fleet and global IntelsatONE terrestrial network.

   Intelsat Senior Vice President and CTO Thierry Guillemin described the Intelsat EpicNG platform as an innovative approach to satellite and network architectures.

   “As bandwidth demand grows, speed and throughput is critical. However, equally important is the operating environment,” Guillemin said in a statement. “Our customers operate vast infrastructures, with millions of dollars invested in capital equipment and operational teams that must be managed efficiently. Intelsat EpicNG caters to this environment, with an architecture open to a wide array of network topologies and terminal technologies. Combined with multi-band frequency reuse, this is high throughput with the benefits of backward and forward compatibility.”

   Features of the Intelsat EpicNG series include: higher performance and lower cost per-bit; multi-band frequencies aligned to region- and application-specific requirements; open architecture; backward compatibility; use of existing network infrastructure; and customer-preferred network topology.

   Intelsat CEO David McGlase said the operator’s customers would, in many cases, be able to define their own service characteristics with the Intelsat EpicNG platform.

   “The Intelsat EpicNG platform represents the next generation of satellites and a progressive evolution of the Intelsat fleet,” McGlade said in a statement. “We are strategically investing in this platform to support our customers with a highly reliable and efficient broadband infrastructure as they launch new services and enter new geographies.”