Telesat Lands 2.3 Billion Dollar Arctic Satellite Contract

Telesat has secured a massive contract worth 2.3 billion Canadian dollars to provide military satellite communications across Canada's Arctic region. The award is part of the Enhanced Satellite Communications Project, Polar programme and will see Telesat expand its Lightspeed constellation from 156 to 225 satellites.

The agreement includes two five-year options worth about 200 million Canadian dollars each, which could raise the total contract value to 2.7 billion Canadian dollars. Services are scheduled to begin in 2028, with the first phase covering Military Ka-band services between 65 and 90 degrees north latitude.

Telesat's President and CEO Dan Goldberg said, 'This contract ensures the Canadian Armed Forces will have access to secure, resilient and sovereign connectivity years earlier than originally planned, at a great value for money, and with a scalable architecture designed to meet future global operational requirements and support interoperability with Canada's allies and partners.'

The expansion will increase planned network capacity by 44% and raise expected investment in the 225-satellite network to about 7 billion Canadian dollars. Telesat has already invested 2.7 billion Canadian dollars to date.