Telesat, a leading global satellite operator, and Telefónica International Wholesale Services (TIWS), the international wholesale services provider of the Telefónica Group, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies, have completed live in-orbit testing across a wide range of applications on Telesat’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Phase 1 satellite.
With a mission to increase agility and improve operational efficiencies, TIWS partnered with Telesat on a rigorous testing campaign to explore the performance and feasibility of leveraging LEO satellites for high-end services. Testing demonstrated that Telesat LEO could be a viable option for wireless backhaul and presents a substantial improvement in performance over geostationary orbit (GEO) links, without the use of compression or TCP acceleration techniques that are typically required in 650ms latency GEO environments.
Applications tested over Telesat LEO resulted in observed round trip latency of 30-60 msec without any packet loss. Test scenarios included:
High definition video streaming, without interruption.
Video conference with teams, demonstrating consistent fluidity of movement and voice transmission with user experience matching terrestrial and cellular connections.
Remote desktop connection to seamlessly manage a remote computer.
VPN connection without any delay or outages.
FTP encrypted file transfers of 2 GB in both directions.
IPSec tunnel encryption with no reduction in the performance of the link.
“As we plan, design and build our offerings to provide best-in-class connectivity for our customers, we are eager to explore how cutting-edge technologies like Telesat LEO can integrate with our global connectivity infrastructure,” explains Gustavo Arditti, TIWS Satellite Business Unit Director. “Across every application tested, Telesat LEO delivered an outstanding performance, with significant improvements over what we can achieve via GEO satellites today.”
“The ability to demonstrate fibre-like performance via satellite across a number of applications that perform poorly on GEO satellite backhaul is a testament to the capabilities of our Telesat LEO network,” stated Erwin Hudson, Vice President, Telesat LEO. “With its high-throughput links, ultra-low latency, and disruptive economics, Telesat LEO offers an unparalleled value proposition to expand the reach of 4G and 5G networks.”