SES Wins Multiple Government Contracts for MEO Capacity

Rendition of new O3b mPower network. Photo: SES.

SES announced today that its wholly owned subsidiary, SES Government Solutions, has won several key contracts to provide managed network services leveraging SES’ high throughput, low latency Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) O3b satellite network capabilities. By the end of 2017, SES GS will be delivering nearly 4 Gigabits per second of managed O3b services supporting 13 sites globally to customers ranging from the Department of Defense (DOD) to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The United States government has already deployed and integrated MEO-enabled solutions to multiple locations worldwide, SES stated. U.S. government customers have leveraged SES’ MEO capabilities to satisfy requirements that vary from niche services, such as large file transfer or backhaul of Big Data to providing backbone services to support an entire enterprise. According to SES, the low latency features of its MEO network are also important as they enable government customers to take advantage of cloud-based applications.

SES has observed that demand for MEO services for defense and security applications is on the rise, with a recent DOD Request for Information (RFI) further demonstrating the U.S. government’s need for expanded low latency capabilities. It intends to further expand its MEO capabilities with additional O3b satellite launches in 2018 and 2019.