Telesat Lightspeed
Telesat
Telesat Lightspeed is an enterprise-class LEO satellite network designed to provide guaranteed, fibre-like inflight connectivity for aviation.
Technical specifications
- Constellation size
- 198 satellites
- Altitude
- ~1,000 km (non-GSO LEO)
- Frequency
- Ka-band with inter-satellite laser links
- Latency
- <50 ms
- Target market
- Enterprise, government, aviation, maritime
- Launch partners
- SpaceX, Rocket Lab
- Satellite manufacturer
- MDA Space (Canada)
- Founded
- Telesat founded 1969, Canada
About
Telesat Lightspeed goes above and beyond consumer-first LEO satellite networks to put your inflight connectivity (IFC) solution in a class of its own. It offers guaranteed, fibre-like LEO satellite services from pole-to-pole and scalable, concentrated capacity around airport hubs and busy flight routes. This network provides global coverage, always-on connectivity, and ultra-low latency, supporting the most demanding real-time, interactive, and cloud-based applications on every passenger device simultaneously. Telesat Lightspeed is an enterprise-class network with redundancies and path diversity mechanisms in space and on the ground to protect against outages. Every service is backed by guarantees for data rates, latency, packet loss, and jitter. The network architecture is Secure by Design, aligning with major industry and government standards, and offers around-the-clock access to network experts. It is designed to support flat panel antennas, including forward-compatible and multi-orbit antennas, from a range of innovative Ka-band antenna manufacturers, allowing for futureproof flexibility and optimization for different aircraft.
Documentation
No public datasheet yet — request the datasheet / ICD from the supplier.