Space Systems/Loral (SS/L), a provider of commercial
satellites, announced it has been awarded a contract to provide two high-power
satellites to Intelsat for Direct-to-Home (DTH) television service in Latin
America.

The two satellites will be operated by Intelsat, which
will provide them to DIRECTV Latin America, a leading DTH digital television
services operator in Latin America.

“Space Systems/Loral’s high-power heritage and
record of reliability make them an excellent choice for this procurement,”
said Thierry Guillemin, SVP and chief technical officer of Intelsat.

“The new satellites will help us support our
customer’s expansion plans in this region of robust economic growth with all
the bandwidth necessary for today’s most advanced television services,”
Guillemin added.

“The DLA-1 and DLA-2 satellites fuel the already
stellar growth of the DIRECTV business in Latin America for new HDTV services,
and provides full fleet redundancy for the reliability of these services for
our customers,” said Rômulo Pontual, executive vice president and chief
technology officer, DIRECTV.

“By working closely with Intelsat and SS/L, DIRECTV
has been able to leverage the spot-beam frequency reuse technologies to greatly
expand the capacity into Latin America with the industry’s best technology. The
cooperation of these three powerful companies has produced a powerful
architecture for our business,” Pontual added.

The Ku-band payloads will be used to expand DTH
entertainment offerings and provide backup and restoration services. The two
satellites are scheduled for launch in 2014 and 2015, respectively, and will be
co-located with Intelsat’s Galaxy 3C satellite at 95°W.

“Today’s highest power satellites maximize the
amount of high-definition programming that can be broadcast and provide a
better business case for the operator,” said John Celli, president of
Space Systems/Loral.

“Space Systems/Loral is the only satellite
manufacturer with five 20-kW satellites currently on orbit and numerous others
scheduled for launch over the next year. We are very proud of our heritage
high-power technology and pleased to be able to continue to support the
Intelsat and DIRECTV businesses,” Celli added.

The two satellites are designed based on the decades
proven Space Systems/Loral 1300 platform and the first is scheduled to launch
in 2014. They are contracted to provide service for a minimum of 15 years.

 

By Telecomlead.com Team
[email protected]