Built by Orbital Sciences, the Intelsat 23 will replace the Intelsat 707 at 307 degrees East and aims to provide C-band services to the Americas, Europe and Africa, Ku-band coverage for Latin America and increased capacity for enterprise, oil and gas and data networking applications. The satellite is designed to deliver a service life of more than 15 years and marks ILS’s 75th commercial launch with Intelsat.

"Intelsat 23 will refresh satellite capacity across four continents, offering critical services to the world’s leading communications providers," Intelsat CEO David McGlade said in a statement. "This launch continues our current fleet replacement and expansion campaign, which is scheduled for completion in early 2013."