Orange with a presence in eight African countries, along with its subsidiary Senegalese Sonatel, will partner with SES to deploy and manage the first O3b mPOWER gateway in Africa, allowing the African continent to enjoy easy access to high performance and low latency connectivity services.

The three companies announced that the gateway for O3b mPOWER, SES’s next-generation medium earth orbit (MEO) communications system, will be located at the Sonatel teleport in the Senegalese territory of Gandoul, among other local satellites antennas.

This very first O3b mPOWER gateway will be used by Sonatel and Orange to deliver high performance, low latency, and cloud-optimised connectivity services throughout Africa. SES will also use the gateway to support telemetry, tracking and command (TT&C) functions for the O3b mPOWER fleet from an additional location. The terabit-scale O3b mPOWER constellation and its automated, advanced ground infrastructure can dynamically deliver multiple gigabits-per-second beams of managed data services to customers.

The three companies intend to establish a memorial on site at the Gandoul gateway. It will highlight the history of satellite connectivity in Africa and the positive impact that advanced technologies and solutions such as O3b mPOWER can have on the continent.

“The Sonatel teleport is Senegal’s pride, as it was home of the very first 30-metre satellite dish ever to be installed in Africa. Not only has Senegal played a key role in developing the telecommunication industry in the African continent for the last 50 years, but we will also continue to lead in bringing new technologies to the market with the introduction of O3b mPOWER, a next-generation MEO satellite network,” said Sekou Drame, CEO of Sonatel.

“At Orange, we continue to believe that satellite remains a promising technology and that the many innovations it currently showcases will give it an increasingly growing position in the telecommunication field, in Africa as well as other continents that have more developed infrastructures, such as Europe or North America. This is why we are particularly pleased about the consolidation of our partnership with SES, which will add a major new component to Orange’s mission to build intelligent, open networks in order to foster usages and access to digital technologies for the greatest number of people.” explained Jean-Luc Vuillemin, executive vice president of Orange International Networks.         

“In the last decade, we have connected communities and industries around the world with our O3b communication system, positively impacting their lives and their businesses. We have partnered with Orange to improve cellular backhaul and internet connectivity for its African affiliates, and to enable enhanced operations for its enterprise customers,” said Steve Collar, CEO of SES. “With the O3b mPOWER system launching in a few months, our customers are already looking forward to how they can expand their networks with much-increased throughput and enhanced flexibility.”

Previously, Orange and SES announced that Orange would be the first global telecom operator to integrate O3b mPOWER in its network to support the growing demand for connectivity in Africa, starting in the Central African Republic.