Telesat Lightspeed constellation. Photo: Telesat and VIa Satellite illustration

Telesat announced two collaborations this week in Africa and the Philippines on its Lightspeed Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation. First, Liquid Intelligent Technologies reached a strategic cooperation agreement with Telesat to explore reciprocal go-to-market strategies to bring Lightspeed services to Africa. 

Telesat and Liquid will work together to integrate the Lightspeed satellite network into Liquid’s services network for cloud services, managed security services, business Wi-Fi, and data center connectivity. In addition, Telesat will consider combining Liquid’s landing stations, points of presences, site hosting, management services, and fiber network as part of its global terrestrial infrastructure.

“Telesat Lightspeed will be the world’s most advanced LEO network, delivering the enterprise-grade, fiber-like connectivity that Africa’s massively underserved market needs,” said Scott Mumford, Liquid Satellite Services CEO. “Integrating ubiquitous, multi-gigabit per second links with guaranteed SLA’s from Telesat Lightspeed will enable Liquid to expand their award-winning services via an untethered network in the sky, and deliver expanded service offerings to our customers not possible through the current satellite-based offerings.”

Separately, Philippine telecommunications company PLDT announced this week that it  successfully tested high-speed broadband connectivity with Telesat’s initial LEO satellite in orbit. PLDT said these tests were the Philippine’s first broadband connection to a LEO satellite.

It was also Telesat’s first tests with an operator in Southeast Asia. The testing was conducted in February using an 85-cm Intellian parabolic antenna. The live test and demonstration saw broadband download and upload speeds of 100.46 Mbps and 95.62 Mbps, respectively, and roundtrip latency of 26.53ms. It was used for Microsoft Teams, mobile gaming, and video streaming.