SES Networks and Orange will jointly provide higher-capacity satellite connectivity to Orange’s maritime customers to help them accelerate their digital transformation.
The integration of Orange‘s global infrastructure with the global network coverage powered by SES Networks’ Skala Global Platform will allow Orange maritime customers to cost-effectively scale up their bandwidth with seamless, ubiquitous and global services. In addition, this collaboration will let the maritime customers add new technologies to leverage IoT and AI, as well as edge and cloud applications to implement automation and digitalisation of onboard processes to ensure optimum performance, efficiency and reliability.
The combination of the Orange secured and digital network infrastructure and SES Networks’ Skala Global Platform -- a next-generation technology platform which provides worldwide coverage via multiple geostationary satellites and gateways interconnected by a global terrestrial network -- will deliver reliable, high-performance broadband services everywhere, from developed markets to the hardest-to-reach places on Earth. This development is in line with the Orange ambition to become a key player offering solutions for the maritime sector.
This is not the first collaboration between the Orange Group and SES Networks. In recent years, Orange has leveraged SES’ innovative O3b satellite constellation operating in medium earth orbit (MEO) as well as SES’ geostationary satellites to deliver global fibre-like, low-latency services to their mining customers. Orange has also been using SES’s MEO and GEO services to provide international connectivity where needed and to deploy cellular services across remote areas of Africa. Orange is also the first announced network operator to adopt O3b mPOWER, SES’s next-generation MEO system, which is planned for commercial service availability in the second half of 2022.
Commenting on the partnership, Jean-Luc Vuillemin, executive vice president, Orange International Networks Infrastructures and Services, said, “At Orange, we continue to believe that satellite is a future-oriented technology and that the many recent innovations in this industry will give it a growing place in the telco area, whether in Africa, in more developed areas such Europe or North America, or in specific industries such as maritime. This is why we are glad to reinforce our partnership with SES, as it will add a new component to our overall mission at Orange, that of building intelligent, open and innovative networks in order to support the digital transformation of our business customers and provide access to digital usage to the largest number of people.”
Meanwhile, John-Paul Hemingway, CEO of SES Networks, said, “We have been working closely together with the Orange Group the last couple of years to provide high-performance connectivity services worldwide to their customers in many different industries. As our partner, they were the first major telco player to embrace our upcoming O3b mPOWER and now collaborating together on our Skala Global Platform, SES will deliver new levels of connectivity, creating seamless, reliable global coverage for those in the maritime industry.”