Nelco, an Indian satcom provider and a subsidiary of the Tata Group, announced earlier today it had signed an agreement with Telesat to be a partner on its Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation.
Telesat the tortoise
Telesat may be poised to announce this fall it will go public early next year to capitalize on the markets current love for technology companies. If true, it would bring a needed cash infusion for the company to build and launch its constellation.
While some potential suppliers are publicly frustrated at the slow pace the company is moving at, others wait patiently for the opportunity that might present itself.
Telesat’s pace could be compared to Aesop’s fable, the tortoise and the hare, with Telesat the tortoise and competitors such as SpaceX as the hare. For those not keeping score, one in five satellites in orbit now belongs to SpaceX.
And while OneWeb entered, and is emerging from bankruptcy court, it too is ready to resume launching satellites this fall. And there are other competitors out there as well. Telesat is definitely moving at a slow steady pace with a long game in mind.
Nelco opens another market
The agreement with Nelco is yet another sign that Telesat, a long-time player and survivor in the telecom world, is making sure that when its constellation is deployed it will have commercial and government customers signed on. One of the key customers is expected to be the Canadian government which has already pledged $600 million with a formal agreement expected in the near future.
In a press release Nelco stated the “Telesat LEO Network in India has the potential to provide significant benefits in areas like 4G/5G backhaul, mobile hotspots, distance education, telemedicine, village connectivity, as well as maritime and inflight connectivity. “
The press release further states that “the open architecture, compliant with the Metro Ethernet Forum standard, will simplify the integration of Telesat LEO services with enterprise networks, including Nelco infrastructure and service offerings. Acting as a virtual fibre network, Telesat LEO Layer 2 transport service can deliver hundreds of Mbps to a terminal.”
Mr. P J Nath, Managing Director and CEO of Nelco said, “considering the huge potential for Satcom services growth in the country in the coming years, we are continuously exploring the latest satellite technologies to bring better value to our customers and expand the market. We believe that our partnership with Telesat will help in bringing LEO satellites into the country, which has the potential to revolutionise connectivity in the future.”
And with that Telesat has another partner. Now who’s next?