OREANDA-NEWS. Telesat, a leading global satellite operator, announced today the successful launch of its new Telstar 12 VANTAGE satellite aboard a rocket provided by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI). Telstar 12 VANTAGE was builtby Airbus Defence and Space and is the first of a new generation of Telesat satellites with capacity optimized to serve the types of bandwidth intensive applications increasingly in demand by users.

Operating from Telesat’s prime orbital location of 15 degrees West, Telstar 12 VANTAGE will utilize a combination of broad regional beams and high throughput spot beams to increase capacity and offer superior performance for broadcasters as well as enterprise networks on the ground, in the air and at sea. The satellite will use Ku-band for all customer services assuring backward compatibility with existing Ku-band terminal equipment.

Telstar 12 VANTAGE replaces and expands on Telesat’s Telstar 12 satellite. Telstar 12 has long been valued by the satellite user community for its ability to seamlessly connect the Americas to Europe and the Middle East from 15 West, one of the few orbital locations that enables such coverage. With Telstar 12 VANTAGE, customers in mobility, government, and energy markets will now have even greater service options between EMEA and the Americas along with powerful new beams over Brazil, Sub-Saharan Africa, the South Atlantic, Caribbean, Mediterranean and North Sea.

“Telstar 12 VANTAGE marks another advance in Telesat’s record of innovative payload designs and provides our customers with the advantages they need to compete successfully in today’s satellite service markets,” said Dan Goldberg, Telesat’s President and CEO. “Telesat is pleased to be building on our leadership in mobility services, both maritime and aero, with powerful new coverage over the North Sea, the Mediterranean, Caribbean and the South Atlantic. We would like to thank our valued partners – MHI and Airbus Defence and Space – for the successful and timely launch of Telesat’s Telstar 12 VANTAGE satellite.”