Global Eagle Entertainment and Telesat to collaborate on Telesat’s LEO system to serve aviation and maritime demand. Photo Credit: Global Eagle Entertainment

Telesat and Global Eagle Entertainment have agreed to collaborate in optimizing the capabilities of Telesat’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) system to serve growing broadband requirements of maritime and aeronautical markets. The collaboration will include user terminal development, service-offering design, marketing, in-flight testing and at-sea performance testing.

This collaboration follows Global Eagle’s review of planned Non-Geostationary-Orbit (NGSO) constellations. The two companies work together on design and testing activities for Telesat’s planned LEO constellation using Telesat’s recently launched Phase 1 LEO satellite. The parties will focus on airline and large cruise ship applications in polar and high-latitude regions, and passenger use-cases globally that leverage sub-50 millisecond latency for data-intensive applications. For aviation, Global Eagle will be testing its newly developed Ka-band antenna.