Hughes and Telesat Sign Capacity Agreement on New Telstar 19 Vantage Satellite Covering South America

[Via Satellite 11-11-2015] Hughes Network Systems and Telesat announced a 15-year agreement for Ka-band capacity on Telesat’s new Telstar 19 Vantage satellite, planned for launch in early 2018. The agreement calls for Telesat to deliver Ka-band capacity of 31 Gbps on Telstar 19 Vantage covering many countries in South America, which Hughes will use to expand its broadband satellite services for consumers. Hughes will deploy its high-throughput Jupiter technology for the ground system and customer premises equipment.

“Hughes is excited to conclude this agreement with Telesat, which will help us meet the growing demand for broadband services across areas of South America that are unserved or underserved by terrestrial networks,” said Pradman Kaul, president of Hughes. “It will further augment coverage of our planned Eutelsat 65W satellite to be launched in 2016, which together will provide us with significant HTS capacity over all the Americas for high-speed Internet access.”

Telstar 19 Vantage, which will be collocated with the Telstar 14R satellite at 63 degrees west, is the second of a new generation of Telesat satellites designed with high-throughput capabilities. In addition to its high-throughput Ka-band capacity for Hughes, Telstar 19 Vantage will bring significant additional Ku-band capacity to Latin America, said Dan Goldberg, Telesat’s president and CEO.