Based on recent growth in its hosted payload business, Boeing has established a unit within its Space and Intelligence Systems division to market commercial services to the private and public sectors, the company announced Feb. 22.
    Boeing Commercial Satellite Services will design and market a variety of hosted payload and other configurations based on customer needs. The hosted payloads market represents a major part of Boeing’s long-term business model as global demand for communications bandwidth continues to increase dramatically, said Boeing Satellite Systems International CEO Craig Cooning, who will manage the new unit.
    “The success we’ve seen in hosted payloads by winning five contract in the past 18 months validates our market strategy to promote these solutions as creative and crucial alternatives for military customers to acquire limited bandwidth resources. The demand for satellite communications continues to be greater than the supply,” Cooning told Via Satellite. 
    Boeing entered the hosted payloads business in 1993, when the company helped the U.S. Navy upgrade its ultra-high frequency (UHF) satellite communications system to host an extremely high frequency (EHF) payload as well as the first military Ka-band payload, Cooning said. “We also built L-band, X-band and Ka-band hosted payloads that have served foreign governments through spacecraft owned by commercial satellite operators. In 2010, we entered into an agreement with Inmarsat to assist them in leasing Ka-band services to the U.S. government under their Global Xpress offering. This business model can be applied to a commercial satellite operator interested in leasing service to governments.”
    Inmarsat unveiled in December a Global Xpress deal with Boeing which will see Boeing Commercial Satellite Services supplement military capacity on its Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) fleet. Three WGS satellites are in orbit, with three more scheduled for launch by late 2012. 
    One of the Global Xpress satellites will be built by Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems and will carry a hosted payload for U.S. Department of Defense customers. In November, Inmarsat President of Global Government Services Rebecca Cowen-Hirsch told Satellite News that the company is negotiating the service’s hosted-payload lease structure with the Pentagon. “For the military, discussions are beginning, and at the operation level there is significant receptiveness. At the policy level, there is conceptual receptiveness. The most difficult challenge is the program level, and there has not been as much traction yet, but we’re getting there and making progress. As with all commercial communications and technology discussions with the military, these things take time,” Hirsch said.
 Shortly after the Inmarsat deal was announced, Boeing activated the U.S. Air Force’s WGS-3 satellite, completing the constellation’s Block-1 program and building strength for the next three satellites, which will make up the Block-2 program.
    In a June interview with Satellite News, Jim Simpson, vice president of business development for Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems, predicted that the company would make a strong impact on the international satellite marketplace in the near future with at least two to three awards for as many as six satellites made up of the company’s 702MP and 702HP platforms and hosted payloads. If successful in its pursuits, said Simpson, 2010 would be a very successful year for Boeing.
    “In the next few years, our goal is to move to greater balance in the 70 percent government/30 percent commercial range. We believe our expertise in both commercial and government markets enables us to be well suited for hosting government-utilized payloads on commercial systems and provides an adjacent market,” said Simpson. “Our commercial model has been pretty consistent since 2003 at around 15 to 25 [geostationary] satellites per year. We believe that this model will continue through 2020.”