Selman Demirel (left), Vice President of Satellite Operations at Türksat and Tajani Bouqentar (right), Vice President, Middle East, ST Engineering iDirect, sign a contract for the provision of ground systems for the Türksat 5B satellite. (Photo by ST Engineering iDirect)

ST Engineering iDirect will provide multiple Dialog XIF ground system hubs and 5,000 remotes to Turkish satellite operator Türksat under a new multi-million dollar contract the two companies announced on Tuesday.

Once delivered, the ST Engineering iDirect ground systems will run a variety of services over the Türksat 5B satellite for customers in government, enterprise, mobility, and cellular backhaul markets. Türksat is utilizing 30 beams on the 5G satellite — its newest satellite to date — to provide both low data rates and high throughputs of over 1 Gbps for more demanding applications.

Türksat will also be utilizing ST Engineering iDirect’s network management system (NMS) to allow orchestration between services, capacity, terminals, and beams.

“The latest satellite of our fleet, Türksat 5B, will greatly increase our current coverage and bandwidth over Ka- HTS,” said Selman Demirel, vice president of Satellite Operations at Türksat. “This will enable Türksat to extend broadband services over many regions including Middle East, Africa, as well as major maritime and airtime routes. The partnership with ST Engineering iDirect in this expansion is very important for Türksat to provide seamless, cost-effective and flexible services to current and prospective customer needs in a very broad and rapidly improving market. The Dialog XIF Hub with flexibility, multi-service capability and scalability will be a key asset for Türksat for these active markets. Therefore, we truly appreciate this new contract to strengthen our strategic partnership.”

Türksat launched 5B in December 2021. The satellite’s high-throughput service is based on DVB-S2X and Mx-DMA MRC optimization technologies, and is scheduled provide coverage over the entire Middle East, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, North Africa, East Africa, South Africa, and Nigeria starting in the third quarter of 2022.