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Intelsat and SES expect to receive billions of dollars in incentive payments to clear C-band spectrum by December 2023 and signed manufacturing and launch deals in 2020 to place new capacity in orbit ahead of that deadline.
SES chose SpaceX in 2019 to launch seven O3b mPower satellites on two Falcon 9 missions in 2021.
SpaceX will launch all 11 of SES’s O3b mPower satellites to medium Earth orbit across four Falcon 9 launches.
SES operates around 70 satellites, comprising roughly 50 in the geostationary arc for television and broadband and 20 in medium Earth orbit for low-latency internet services.
The O3b mPower constellation builds off SES’s current O3b fleet of 20 satellites built by Thales Alenia Space.
SES’s four-satellite expansion order was announced on 2020-08-07.
SES has grouped the satellites into trios for the first three Falcon 9 launches scheduled for the third quarter of 2021, the first quarter of 2022, and the second half of 2022.
On 2020-08-20, SES selected SpaceX to launch four recently ordered O3b mPower broadband satellites.
Intelsat and SES each expect to spend nearly $1,700,000,000 on their C-band transitions inclusive of satellite manufacturing, launch and insurance, new teleport infrastructure, signal compression technology and other costs.
SES affirmed to the FCC on 2020-08-14 that it needs six satellites it ordered this summer at an average manufacturing cost of $144,800,000 per satellite, totaling $869,000,000.
The $3,300,000,000 to $5,200,000,000 in bidder-covered costs are separate from $9,700,000,000 in accelerated clearing payments available to Intelsat, SES, Eutelsat, Telesat and Claro if they clear spectrum by early December 2023 instead of early December 2025.
The order announced 2020-08-07 expands the second-generation O3b mPower constellation to 11 satellites.
To receive the second tranche of $2.99 billion, SES must clear the remaining 180 megahertz by 2023-12-05.
All 11 O3b mPower satellites will operate from medium Earth orbit to provide terabits of mobile broadband capacity for government and commercial customers.
SES signed contracts earlier this summer with Northrop Grumman and Boeing for two C-band satellites apiece.
SES estimates spending 480,000,000 EUR on the four additional O3b mPower satellites, an amount that covers manufacturing, launch, and insurance.
Current plans call for launching the first three O3b mPower satellites late next year, six more in 2022, and the final two in 2024.
Boeing is building the first seven O3b mPower satellites under a contract awarded in 2017.
SES plans to deploy its 11-satellite O3b mPower constellation between 2021 and 2024.
SES operates a constellation of roughly 50 geostationary satellites from various manufacturers.