TAMPA, Fla. — Canada’s Telesat is pitching Lightspeed as a bridge to IRIS² as its low Earth orbit (LEO) broadband constellation is set to come online in 2027, at least three years before Europe’s sovereign multi-orbit network is due to enter service.
“We believe there’s a great opportunity for the Government of Canada to work with the EU and its allied governments in Europe to leverage Lightspeed in advance of IRIS² being available,” Telesat CEO Dan Goldberg said Sept. 15 during World Space Business Week in Paris.
“And so that’s something that we’re very open to. I believe the Government of Canada is very open to that.”
IRIS² (or Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite), a public-private partnership led by European operators SES, Eutelsat and Hispasat, envisages a constellation of more than 290 satellites, mostly in LEO.
However, the $11 billion project has been beset by skepticism over its costs and business case, even as demand rises amid Starlink’s growing LEO dominance and upcoming Chinese broadband constellations.
Meeting evolving government needs
Starlink “has proven to be absolutely consequential and decisive” in conflicts such as in Ukraine, Goldberg noted, which has “underscored for governments all around the world the importance of having that type of a capability.”
Telesat sees a significant opportunity for Lightspeed to support Canada as it boosts defense spending to meet NATO commitments, as well as for other governments seeking sovereign or allied LEO capabilities.
“Ideally they build it themselves, but these LEO constellations are expensive, they’re complicated and they take a long time to roll out,” he added.
“And so at least, I would say for the foreseeable future, there will be governments all around the world leveraging commercial LEO networks.”
Telesat has also pitched Lightspeed for U.S. Department of Defense needs, including its $175 billion “Golden Dome” initiative.
Commercial operators adapt
Goldberg shared a panel with executives from other legacy geostationary orbit (GEO) operators, who stressed that even the United States is looking to diversify with external networks, despite being home to Starlink, Amazon’s upcoming Project Kuiper constellation and the DoD’s own proliferated LEO plans.
“I think the geopolitical situation — and unfortunately the war we are seeing at our borders in Europe — have been showing also that warfare is changing,” said Jean-François Fallacher, CEO of French multi-orbit operator Eutelsat.
“And I think our defense ministries have been realizing that civil … means are used now for military purposes. That’s what we see in Ukraine, and there is more and more interest in our assets, whether those are GEO or LEO.”
Mark Dankberg, CEO of U.S.-based geostationary player Viasat, noted how the blurring of civil and military domains is pressuring operators to make their commercial networks more secure.
“Clearly, there’s opportunity there to come up with more robust systems,” Dankberg said on the panel.
“The other thing I think that’s also becoming a big issue for national security perspective is there’s almost no boundary anymore between civil, civilian, commercial and defense targets. Some of the robustness that people need, or have always recognized that they need for military systems, is now going to be necessary on the commercial side.”
Post-video business
An ongoing decline in satellite video broadcasting that once formed the bulk of GEO revenues continues to pressure legacy operators.
Wholesale video revenues have fallen 20% over four years to $4.4 billion, according to boutique research firm Novaspace, shrinking from half the wholesale capacity market to about 35%.
“It faces meaningful, secular headwinds,” Goldberg said. “There’s no hiding from that.”
Telesat’s main direct-to-home broadcast customers in Canada and the U.S. continue to rely on GEO capacity, but the company has not been able to justify a new business case for launching fresh broadcast satellites.
Fallacher said the video decline is slower outside North America but still requires operators to pivot to new lines of business.
However, panelists agreed consumer broadband is unlikely to be one of them, given Starlink’s dominance and Project Kuiper’s looming entry.
Paul Gaske, chief operating officer of EchoStar, the U.S.-based geostationary operator that owns residential broadband service Hughes, said consumer broadband systems “eat a lot of capacity for the amount of capital you invest. So when we look at it today, we don’t see that growing.
“It has competitive pressures from the LEO world, but it also has regulatory pressures [from terrestrial fiber] subsidies rolling out, and then lastly it has natural economic pressures from the cellular operators that actually can offer the fixed wireless near their towers.”
EchoStar recently pivoted to operate as an “asset-light growth company,” following the sale of spectrum to Starlink owner SpaceX and AT&T. The operator’s executives provided few details about their future strategy during a Sept. 15 press conference at WSBW.