PARIS—Two European rivals announced they would join forces to provide a satellite-based operation that would beam data to mobile handsets, laptops and vehicles. The offering is the latest attempt by satellite companies to score a piece of world’s mobile communications and entertainment revenue.
SES Global SA and Eutelsat Communications announced they would invest about $166 million in a joint venture to fire a W2A satellite built by Alcatel Alenia Space into geosynchronous orbit in 2009. The W2A, which would hover over Europe, will be enabled for delivering video and other services, including security surveillance for enterprises, over the 2 GHz to 2.2 GHz S-band. The companies did not disclose the service’s data rates.
The W2A would be an element in a satellite-terrestrial hybrid network system that potentially could provide universal coverage—the promise of satellite-based services—as well as indoor penetration for video services. The new service would offer an alternative or complementary solution to terrestrial network operators and content providers in the latent mobile data space.
SES Global owns three satellite operators and holds an interest in five others. It owns a fleet of 44 satellites circling the globe. Eutelsat, one of the three leading satellite operators in the world by revenue, has 23 satellites covering the Middle East, Africa, India and portions of Asia and the Americas.
