SES, headquartered in Luxembourg, is one of the world's largest commercial satellite operators by revenue. The company operates a fleet of over 50 geostationary satellites providing video distribution and data services, plus the O3b and O3b mPOWER medium Earth orbit (MEO) constellations for low-latency broadband.
GEO Fleet
SES's Astra series satellites in geostationary orbit deliver direct-to-home television to hundreds of millions of households across Europe, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. The SES-Astra position at 19.2°E is one of the most commercially significant orbital slots in the world, broadcasting to over 118 million homes in Europe. The company also provides government and military communications through its GovSat subsidiary.
O3b mPOWER
O3b (short for "Other 3 Billion" — referring to the world's unconnected population) is SES's MEO constellation at approximately 8,000 km altitude. The original 20-satellite O3b constellation, launched between 2013 and 2019, demonstrated that MEO connectivity could deliver fibre-like latency (~150 ms round-trip) at broadband speeds to remote and maritime customers. O3b mPOWER, the next-generation system built by Boeing, features 11 high-throughput satellites with thousands of electronically steerable beams, delivering terabit-class capacity per satellite. The first mPOWER satellites launched on Falcon 9 in late 2022, with the constellation reaching initial service in 2023.
C-Band Transition
SES received approximately $4 billion from the FCC's C-band spectrum auction, which repurposed satellite spectrum for 5G terrestrial wireless in the United States. This windfall accelerated SES's investment in mPOWER and enabled the acquisition of Intelsat in 2024, creating a combined company with dominant positions in both GEO video distribution and MEO/GEO data services.
SES + Intelsat Merger
The 2024 merger between SES and Intelsat created the world's largest commercial satellite operator by fleet size, with over 100 GEO satellites. The combined entity aims to leverage SES's MEO leadership and Intelsat's extensive GEO and ground infrastructure footprint, while achieving cost synergies from consolidating two organisations that historically competed for the same government, maritime, and aeronautical customers.