For the past 50 years the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), the largest government space agency in the world has empowered Indian communities and businesses via satellite.

In the last two decades, SES has had an important relationship with ISRO India in helping to meet the communications needs of India. Today, SES provides satellite capacity into India via ISRO using six geostationary (GEO) satellites – NSS-12, SES-8, NSS-6, SES-7, SES-9 and SES-12. These satellites host two of India’s major DTH platforms that are viewed by some 30 million satellite TV subscribers. We also provide capacity to five of India’s major VSAT providers, serving more than 200,000 VSAT terminals spread across the length and breadth of India. These VSAT providers use our capacity for banking, enterprise, education, telemedicine and e-government networks serving even the most remote parts of India. We are proud to have helped India grow its vibrant broadcasting sector, and to have helped increase rural connectivity, and we have not stood still.

Empowering India with the right solutions

India’s Digital National Communications Policy sets a goal of providing 50 Mbps of broadband connectivity to every citizen by 2022. This includes creating “Broadband Highways” to 250,000 villages in India, many of them in remote locations. If these goals are to be achieved cost effectively and by 2022, a massive amount of additional satellite bandwidth will be needed. ISRO itself will be adding more capacity over the next few years, but more will be required to achieve the goal that has been set.

Photo caption: SES-12 roaring into space onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral Photo credit: SpaceX

SES stands ready and is willing to help accelerating achievement of this goal. We have made investments in satellite assets that can be put to immediate use over India. These include our newest high-throughput satellite, SES-12, and our innovative O3b Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) constellation that can serve connectivity needs across India -- be it the Northeast or the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Since 2014, our MEO constellation has been delivering extremely high capacity, fibre-like connectivity to customers around the world and is a perfect fit for isolated geographies in India having concentrated bandwidth demand.

The multi-orbit solutions that we have will enable us to complement ISRO satellite assets to fast track deployment of high-speed broadband and mobile services in remote locations and bridge the digital divide. Our fully-funded MEO system is ideal to meet the burgeoning demand for connectivity at sea and in the skies and is key in driving the digital transformation and increasing cloud adoption as we seamlessly integrate satellite-based services into the broader global terrestrial network.