Rendering of SES 17. Photo: BusinessWire.

SES and Thales Alenia Space announced the addition of a Digital Transparent Processor (DTP) called SpaceFlex onboard the SES 17 satellite, which will allow SES to offer its mobility customers additional efficiency and flexibility in bandwidth management capabilities.

The two companies have jointly optimized SES 17’s fully digital payload over the past year. SES 17 will cover North America, South America, Central America, the Caribbean and the Atlantic Ocean, and is expected to fly in 2020.

Equipped with close to 200 spot beams of mixed sizes, the fully digital SES 17 spacecraft will provide mobility customers with the ability to modify their networks in real time in response to changing bandwidth demands, either on a daily schedule or in response to unanticipated changes such as weather.

Other additional capabilities include: new redundancy features; improved ability for SES and its customers to implement mesh, broadcast, and multicast network configurations; and improved efficiency in throughput and bandwidth use resulting in greater price competitiveness.

Thales’ InFlyt Experience will be SES 17’s anchor customer.