TAMPA, Fla. — Geostationary operator Intelsat announced Jan. 8 its first enterprise multi-orbit broadband deal with a telco since expanding its partnership last year with OneWeb, the low Earth orbit (LEO) constellation aiming for global coverage this spring.
The deal with Alaska’s GCI enables the telco to provide LEO services to customers, including government agencies and businesses, across the largest state in the United States, supported by the geostationary capacity Intelsat was already providing.
Last year, Intelsat announced plans to enable multi-orbit connectivity across Alaska Airlines’ entire fleet by 2026.
Ground infrastructure delays continue to restrict OneWeb’s services to the Americas, large swathes of Europe, Asia, and a handful of other areas.
However, an Intelsat spokesperson said the operator sees increasing demand for multi-orbit connectivity across nearly all its business units as OneWeb nears global service, especially in land and air mobility.
“This service fits best in mission-critical type of service, public safety, or any application that requires high availability and SLA,” the spokesperson said, referring to service level agreements that guarantee performance metrics such as uptime and response times.
Intelsat and other legacy geostationary operators see network redundancy as a key advantage to competing with LEO-only Starlink for government and enterprise customers with mission-critical needs. LEO satellites also orbit closer to Earth than their geostationary counterparts, reducing network latency.
The Intelsat spokesperson declined to disclose details about the deal with GCI, which follows a geostationary-only contract signed four years ago.
While the service is multi-orbit, the spokesperson said GCI requires separate terminals to access both networks. Intelsat said it expects to start providing the multi-orbit service this year but did not provide a detailed timeline.
GCI is one of Alaska’s largest employers, with a team of more than 1,800 people across the state, and also uses fiber and microwave technologies to provide connectivity in the region.
According to GCI, 97% of Alaskans live within its network, and 80% have access to internet speeds as fast as 2.5 gigabits per second (Gbps).
OneWeb has touted internet speeds of up to 195 megabits per second, which can support high-definition video streaming and other bandwidth-intensive tasks, and is available across Alaska, alongside Starlink, which advertises speeds of up to 250 Mbps.
Intelsat doubled down on its capacity partnership with OneWeb in March, expanding its scope globally from an initial focus on Europe, the Middle East, and the Pacific.
Meanwhile, Intelsat is seeking regulatory approvals to sell its business to satellite fleet operator SES, which owns satellites in geostationary and medium Earth orbit.
