Intelsat has announced a new enterprise multi-orbit broadband agreement with Alaska's GCI, marking its first such deal with a telecom since strengthening its collaboration with OneWeb last year.
The January 8 announcement sees GCI leveraging Intelsat's geostationary satellite capacity alongside OneWeb's low Earth orbit (LEO) network to deliver broadband services across Alaska. This deal will support both government and business customers throughout the state, including in remote and challenging areas.
Intelsat's expanded partnership with OneWeb aims to provide global coverage by spring 2025, further enhancing the company's multi-orbit services. Last year, Intelsat also revealed plans to equip Alaska Airlines' fleet with multi-orbit connectivity by 2026.
Despite these advancements, OneWeb has faced challenges with its ground infrastructure, limiting service availability in certain regions, including the Americas and large parts of Europe and Asia. However, an Intelsat spokesperson highlighted growing demand for multi-orbit connectivity, particularly in sectors like land and air mobility, as OneWeb approaches global service. “This service fits best in mission-critical type of service, public safety, or any application that requires high availability and SLA,” the spokesperson said, referring to service level agreements ensuring high performance standards such as uptime and response times.
While LEO satellites, which orbit closer to Earth, offer lower latency, legacy geostationary operators like Intelsat emphasize the importance of network redundancy, particularly for government and enterprise customers with critical needs. Intelsat's new arrangement with GCI follows an earlier geostationary-only contract signed four years ago, but details regarding the latest agreement were not disclosed.
The multi-orbit service will require separate terminals for GCI's access to both the geostationary and LEO networks, with Intelsat planning to begin service delivery in 2025. No specific timeline was provided.
GCI, one of the largest employers in Alaska with more than 1,800 employees, operates a network using fiber and microwave technologies. The company claims that 97% of Alaskans live within its coverage area, and 80% have access to internet speeds up to 2.5 gigabits per second (Gbps).
In contrast, OneWeb promises speeds of up to 195 megabits per second (Mbps), and Starlink advertises up to 250 Mbps, both of which are available in Alaska.
Intelsat, which further expanded its partnership with OneWeb in March, is also seeking regulatory approval to sell its satellite business to SES, a rival satellite operator with assets in both geostationary and medium Earth orbits.