Telstar 19 Vantage HTS shown in antenna testing at SSL in Palo Alto, California. Photo: CNW Group/Maxar Technologies

Telesat‘s Telstar 19 Vantage high throughput satellite (HTS) entered commercial service and is fully operational at 63 degrees West. Telstar 19 Vantage was launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on July 22, and will serve growing consumer, enterprise, and mobility markets across the Americas and Atlantic. The satellite is being operated by Telesat Brasil, a Brazilian satellite company wholly-owned by Telesat.

Telstar 19 Vantage was built by SSL, a Maxar Technologies company, and is the latest in a new generation of Telesat satellites with capacity optimized to serve the types of bandwidth intensive applications increasingly in demand by users worldwide. It operates from Telesat’s prime orbital location of 63 degrees West, the same as Telesat’s Telstar 14R satellite. With its distinct zones of coverage across the Americas and Atlantic, Telstar 19 VANTAGE combines regional beams and high throughput spotbeams in Ku-band with additional HTS spotbeams in Ka-band.

As previously announced, Telesat customer Hughes Network Systems signed a 15-year agreement for Telstar 19 Vantage Ka-band capacity — which Hughes refers to as Hughes 63 West. Hughes will utilize this capacity to expand its broadband satellite services for consumers and businesses in South America. Telesat also has long-term contracts for the entire Ka-band capacity of Telstar 19 Vantage over Northern Canada, including providing Bell Canada subsidiary Northwestel with the HTS spotbeam capacity required to enhance broadband connectivity for all 25 communities in Nunavut, Canada’s northernmost territory.