Astrium Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of Astrium, offers a one-stop shop in the satellite services market, targeting secure communications, Earth observation services and navigation services.
The company has posted strong increases in revenue throughout the last few years as it continues to develop new solutions and services for the satellite market, particularly in the military satellite communications space.
In an exclusive interview, CEO Eric Béranger discussed the future for Astrium Services and whether the company’s ambitious strategy of becoming a one-stop shop can become a reality.

Via Satellite: What are the major challenges for EADS Astrium Services over the next 12 months?

Béranger: Astrium Services is about meeting the requirements of its customers. We have a number of milestones to meet this year. We are due to launch another Skynet satellite for the Paradigm fleet. We have important milestones in Germany and in France. We have a huge contract in the Middle East where we are tasked to deliver a full [satellite communications] infrastructure to Yahsat. All of this in a context where we have just grown very significantly since we are now bringing together three pillars within the business — telecoms, geoinformation services and navigation services. One of the obvious challenges is to integrate all of this so we can derive all the synergies possible. We will develop each pillar, but also develop the combination of services, which are the services of tomorrow.
Also, we have a number of important commercial targets in 2008. Last year, the radar satellite Terrasar X was launched. It is now operating perfectly, and we are beginning to sell images from this satellite. You may have heard about the creation of a small company in Germany, Axio-Net (Navigation Services) — a small company but a key operational base for us providing differential augmentation to GNSS signals. For navigation we shall see what happens on Galileo. It has been totally restructured and this year we will see some moves from [the European Commission] and [the European Space Agency] with respect to the future operations of Galileo.

Via Satellite: What is the significance of the recent deal with the French Ministry of Defence to deliver communications services to French troops deployed overseas?

Béranger: Our Passerel service for personal telecommunications to overseas French troops is a key contract, particularly as it complements what we already provide to the U.K. armed forces as part of Welfare through Paradigm. Passerel gives troops wireless telephony and Internet access and is based on the latest IP technology. Troops can buy pre-paid cards for telephone and Internet credits and can be used as and when needed, giving them the kind of service they would expect at home in France. To support this we have put in place a 24-7 customer support Center — again building on what we have learnt from providing services to U.K. armed forces.

Via Satellite: You have discussed committing 5 million euros ($7.90 million) a year to research and development to create new end-to-end solutions. What types of solutions you are looking to create?

Béranger: Since the beginning of the Skynet 5-Paradigm contract with Astrium Services, we have developed some new solutions. At the Global MilSatCom Conference two years ago, we unveiled TextLink, which is a service that allows troops to keep in touch with their base via SMS that we provide using Iridium. We developed this pretty quickly. We have also developed the IDS (Information Dissemination Service) solution which the U.K. [Ministry of Defence] is using today and a push to video service. In addition we have just opened a teleport in France. We inaugurated this in February and are using it to provide Welfare services to French troops, which makes them feel as if they were in an environment at home in France with their mobile phone. Some of the technical solutions we are using to deliver these services were developed internally. In the Middle East, Yahsat will have a network which is totally IP-based, and in part, we could offer this solution because of previous internal developments.

Via Satellite: How are the changing demands for the warfighter impacting the capabilities needed for the next generation of services you provide?

Béranger: People need to be more mobile and they need more information both in and out. This is the driving force. We need to be able to deliver more information in a more mobile environment, and we are achieving that. We have now gathered all the services that can be delivered through satellite to troops on the ground. We can deliver communications, maps and location services. In fact we can deliver more than maps. We can deliver what I call clever maps, which are loaded with real time information on them, including the position of the troops themselves.

Via Satellite: How do you make this concept of a one-stop shop a reality?

Béranger: It is a question of managing people internally who come from different specialities and then assembling a team which is going to deliver the best from each specialty. This is one of our key differentiators. When you engineer a contract such as the Paradigm contract with the U.K. [Ministry of Defence] you have to bring a number of different elements together and at some point they all need to fit together in one place. This is a clear competence and a skill that we have. We have proved that we can do it. When you have this mindset and it is embedded in your team, you are there. You then are in a position to earn the trust of the customer. You can work the relationship and prove to the customer that when they come and ask you for the next mile, you will deliver.
… From the telecoms side, Eliseo is a good example. It came about from discussions with a customer that this type of service could be useful. The idea started, and we soon had people bringing together telecoms, navigation and geoinformational skills to be able to put this service together. Another example, just after signing the Skynet 5 contract in 2003, because we have people in theater, we realized that the troops in Iraq needed a local network within the country — not necessarily using satellites. We discussed this with them and within six weeks, we had defined a local network called Synergy that we implemented very quickly. This is the way you become a one-stop shop — by listening and being responsive.

Via Satellite: Is there any synergy between what you do in the military space and your commercial aspirations?

Béranger: We are unique as we are the only fully private company in the world which owns truly military communication assets. As you would expect, we therefore can offer some very specific elements based on such military-specific assets. But at the same time, we also use a lot of commercial elements in our offering. Our motto is to serve our customers at the cheapest possible price. So when the requirements of our customers allow us to use some purely commercial features or a combination, we do. Today, for example the U.K. [Ministry of Defence] could ask for a service which may or may not require survivability. If it does not require survivability we will use some commercial satellite capacity. Currently we are using Eutelsat, Inmarsat, Intelsat and Iridium.