Intelsat, SES C-Band Clearing Work Well Underway
The two major C-band satellite operators, Intelsat and SES, have band-clearing efforts underway such as relocating customers to different satellites and shipping out integrated receiver/decoders (IRD), they told us. The FCC said the C-band auction "will begin on schedule."
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Roughly 10,000 of the 16,000 incumbent earth stations are being transitioned through lump-sum payments to their operators, meaning satellite operators aren't responsible for such work as filters and antennas, SES said, adding it's focusing on those remaining earth stations looking at multiple companies' satellites. Those shared sites are largely broadcasters or MVPDs, and SES and other satellite operators are lining up work on those, it said.
SES said it has begun some antenna installation work, focusing on customers such as data networks without many receiver sites. It said it's focusing on a particularly large customer moving from one satellite to another, with most antennas for that to be in place by the end of Q1. It said filter work will largely start in June, after transition work that should continue through May. SES said it has numerous radio broadcaster customers, with their transition work to be finished in Q1 and filtering work to be done in Q2.
Intelsat's filtering work will be back-loaded primarily in the final six months of both phases of the C-band clearing, said Tom McNamara, vice president in charge of C-band transition management. McNamara said Intelsat isn't concerned about antenna filter supplies because it expects the industry to converge on standards, and multiple manufacturers will come up to speed on demand. He said Intelsat is working with two filter makers, either of which could handle the entire supply the company needs.
SES has been stocking up on its inventory of filters with the aim being having its whole Phase 1 of the C-band clearing needs available within a few months and all the filters needed for the entire transition by the end of 2021, it said. The company said it hasn't encountered filter supply or labor shortfalls, and it's working with three filter manufacturers, any of which would be capable of meeting its entire demand.
IRDs and encoding equipment could be "a potential choke hold," though so far nothing indicates any supply chain problems for them, McNamara said. Intelsat is shipping IRDs to cable headends starting this week and running through Q2, he said.
SES shipped its first IRDs earlier in November to C-band earth stations, it said. The IRDs needed for Phase 1 of the C-band clearing should be in place and ready to be turned on by February, it said. The company said its satellite transition work, moving customers from one satellite to another, is ahead of schedule, with more than a third of transitions for the first phase complete and a large number of transitions to be done in the next three months.
McNamara said the critical design review for six of its seven replacement satellites should be done in the first half of 2021, with the seventh in Q3. The seven are to be put into orbit through four launches in late '22 and '23, he said.
SES said its replacement satellites, which are being built now, are to be in service in Q4 2022, and services will move from the satellites they replace starting in Q1 2023. That migration from incumbent satellites to replacement ones should be done in June 2023.
McNamara said Intelsat is doing infrastructure upgrades now for teleports to handle telemetry, tracking and control functions that are currently done in Maryland, Colorado and Georgia but moving to remote areas of Maine and Washington state, where those TT&C operations remaining in the lower 300 MHz of the 3.7-4.2 GHz band won't impair C-band spectrum to be auctioned. The Washington TT&C site will be active by the end of '22, he said, with Maine's by mid-2023. SES said it's building out its TT&C locations in Pennsylvania and Washington, adding additional antennas and updating fiber capabilities so they won't just do TT&C but also act as gateways for customer services.