Orange启用Telesat Lightspeed首个欧洲网关

Nearly 50 years ago, Orange built a site for satellite antennas in the middle of rural France about 100 miles from Paris. This week, the telco unveiled a new addition to the facility with the commissioning of the first European gateway for Telesat's Lightspeed low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. For Jean-Louis Le Roux, EVP for Orange International Networks, the inauguration of Telesat's gateway at the carrier's teleport in Bercenay-en-Othe is "a revival of the location with new space technology." "It's a very historical site for Orange ... We have 46 antennas ranging from one meter to 32 meters. We call the antennas our ears, even if we are not listening to anything ... The landscape is quite beautiful. It's in the middle of nowhere in the country and you can see all the 'ears,'" he told Light Reading. The location is also good from a technical perspective, because it can access "all the orbits" and the "electromagnetic noise is very low," he explained. Related:Orange set to claim European satellite first To make way for the Telesat gateway with ten antennas (1 to 4 meters in height), Orange dismantled an old geostationary-Earth orbit (GEO) antenna that was 32 meters tall and no longer used. "It's an important evolution ... Bercenay-en-Othe is becoming multi-technology. We want to make this location an international space hub in Europe that will be able to manage the legacy technology, but also the new technology," said Le Roux. Orange will also provide terrestrial connectivity from Telesat's gateway to its planned point of presence in Paris to support "mission-critical applications." Le Roux's international network unit at Orange has approximately 2,000 people managing connectivity across submarine cables, terrestrial fiber and satellites for the carrier's wholesale and enterprise businesses. Within his team, a "satellite factory" of 100 people are dedicated to satellite communications, 25 of which are maintaining all the antennas at Bercenay-en-Othe. The new gateway will be used by Orange to serve its own wholesale and business customers, but it will also be used by Telesat customers. Orange acts as a "bridge" between the ground and space. It has satellite partners across LEO, GEO and medium-Earth orbit (MEO), including Eutelsat OneWeb, Globecast, SES, Starlink and Telesat, and it is open to more. In the mobile satellite direct-to-device space, the carrier also works with Skylo and AST SpaceMobile. "We consider satellite a full complement to our terrestria…