Orange has switched on the first European ground gateway for Telesat Lightspeed the two companies said Thursday.
The gateway sits inside Orange’s teleport in Bercenay-en-Othe, southeast of Paris, which is certified to the World Teleport Association’s Tier-4 standard, the industry’s top rating for security and uptime. Orange will carry the site’s traffic onward, over its own network, to Telesat’s planned point of presence in Paris, the hub where Lightspeed data reaches Orange’s terrestrial network.
The gateway is a follow-through on the agreement Orange and Telesat signed in March 2025, when Orange committed to host a Lightspeed landing station at Bercenay-en-Othe and carry the network’s capacity on its wholesale business.
This announcement is also separate from the global framework Telesat struck two days earlier with SatPort Infrastructure, an EQT-backed ground-infrastructure company, to build future Lightspeed landing stations on demand around the world. Orange’s gateway predates that arrangement and was negotiated directly between the two companies more than a year before SatPort was involved.
Telesat is aiming for Lightspeed, whose planned initial constellation numbers 225 satellites, to be in global service by the first quarter of 2028, chief commercial officer Glenn Katz said in the release. He added that Telesat wants to widen the Orange relationship “to Orange’s customers across Europe, Africa and other locations around the world.”