20 Maritime satellites for better internet access now completed

SES has passed a milestone in providing faster connectivity to maritime industries. It launched the final four satellites of its O3b constellation that will deliver higher bandwidth to vessels, especially cruise ships.

These new satellites complete SES’ O3b medium Earth orbit (MEO) constellation to speed up internet access for seafarers and passengers in the main shipping routes and cruising regions.

SES’ satellites were launched on a Soyuz rocket to increase the number of MEO satellites to 20. They were launched by Arianespace at the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana on 4 April.

These will enhance coverage across the globe and enable SES Networks to provide greater service availability and reliability, while catering for increasing demand on networked applications in the maritime, government, telecoms and energy markets.

Thales Alenia Space built these satellites at its facilities in Rome, Italy. Maritime Digitalisation & Communications witnessed testing of these satellites when it visited the factory in December 2018.

O3b MEO satellites have provided high-bandwidth VSAT services to vessels, particularly cruise ships since 2013. Up until the end of March, SES had 16 satellites in the constellation to provide Ka-band VSAT to Carnival Corp, Royal Caribbean and MSC Cruises ships. Now it has 20.

SES Networks chief executive John-Paul Hemingway said this latest launch “marks the transition into our next-generation MEO system, O3b mPower” which will be constructed in 2020 for the first launches in 2021.

“With O3b mPower, SES will bring massive scale to our proven O3b model – driving digital transformation and cloud adoption virtually everywhere on the planet,” said Mr Hemingway.

Located almost 8,000 km away from the earth’s surface, the O3b constellation delivers fibre-equivalent connectivity with lower latency than geostationary satellites. To access these services, ships require Ka-band antennas and terminals. Cruise ships usually have dual- or tri-band antennas for Ka-band and communication in another band, C-band or Ku-band.