Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellite communications will support U.S. servicemen overseas

Reston, Va., 19 February 2021 – SES Government Solutions (SES GS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of SES, today announced the award of a new portable maritime solution task order against the single-award Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) for Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) low-latency High Throughput Satellite (HTS) services. The solution leverages the O3b MEO satellite constellation operating 8,000km away from Earth.

The Department of Defense procured a portable MEO service to support forward deployed U.S. military personnel.  Initial deployment of the service exceeded customer expectations and was very well received. This represents a significant breakthrough with the DoD using O3b MEO capabilities for portable high-throughput, low-latency services.

SES GS’s solution integrates the O3b MEO system with a portable antenna and is designed to support both portability and freedom of movement. The self-contained ruggedized design houses all equipment in a rack system with AC unit, power distribution and a battery backup system and can achieve upwards of 400 Mbps x 200 Mbps of throughput over the O3b network.

“The need to provide resilient and diverse satellite communications is critical to meeting Department of Defense SATCOM requirements,” said President and CEO of SES Government Solutions, Brigadier General Pete Hoene, USAF (retired). “This industrial-grade, high-throughput, low-latency capability has been integrated into a turnkey MEO terminal and can be scaled up or down based on the number of users and support requirements. The demonstrated throughput is unsurpassed in a portable maritime system of this size.”

With its new portable maritime solution, SES GS is proud to provide unprecedented connectivity in support of the deployed U.S. DoD personnel and looks forward to continuing mission support with its next-generation O3b mPOWER capability.