Telesat Internet Review: Launch date, prices, and what it means for you

Since Telesat serves primarily large enterprise customers, it’s hard to nail down pricing for it. Enterprise contracts are often tailor-made for the specific business signing the contract. As such, the pricing structure isn’t really comparable to a consumer-facing service like Viasat or Hughesnet.

In fact, Telesat doesn’t advertise any prices on its website—you have to schedule a call to discuss your needs. So if you’re looking for satellite internet service for your home, you’ll want to take a look at other providers like Starlink, Viasat, and especially Hughesnet.

Currently, Telesat operates primarily on a fleet of GEO satellites that offer reasonable speeds to its corporate customers. However, it has big plans for the future with a project called Lightspeed.

Lightspeed is a massive, $5 billion project that will see Telesat putting hundreds of LEO satellites into orbit (similar to Starlink and Project Kuiper) at around 1,000 km (roughly 620 miles), twice the altitude of the International Space Station. The original plan was for roughly 300 satellites, but Telesat has downsized to 188.²

The Lightspeed constellation will power Telesat’s next-gen internet service, which will offer a combined capacity of 10 Tbps, with up to 7.5 Gbps to a single terminal and up to 15 Gbps for single “hotspot” sites like airports.³

Telesat operates 13 GEO satellites in a variety of orbital locations, providing global coverage.⁴ The Lightspeed LEO network will eventually consist of 188 satellites, with plans to deploy starting in 2023.²

This means that customers can currently get satellite internet around the world with Telesat. This is a slower, more traditional satellite internet network, however. The much faster Lightspeed service is not yet available, but when it is, it’ll also cover the entire globe—eventually, anyway.

Compared to other satellite providers, Telesat’s 188 LEO satellites is a pretty small fleet. For example, Amazon’s Project Kuiper plans to deploy over 3,200 satellites, and Starlink has nearly 1,500. However, since Telesat isn’t aiming at large-scale consumer applications, it can get away with smaller and more focused infrastructure.

All that said, the service should be extremely reliable, given that it’s aimed at corporate, enterprise, military, and government use. Of course, for individual consumers, that reliability is useless, since you can’t really get the service. But if you end up using it at work in a military or government environment, you’ll likely be pretty satisfied with it.

Telesat began as a Crown corporation—in other words, it was owned by the Canadian government. However, in 1998 it was privatized and sold to Bell Canada. It’s now a publicly traded company, with stock available on the New York Stock Exchange under the TSAT ticker.

According to LinkedIn, Telesat has a company size of 201–500 employees⁵. That’s a reasonable number for a business-to-business satellite internet company, and that reflects in Telesat’s performance overall.

The company has some big initiatives in the works, like the previously mentioned Telesat Lightspeed, and while it has had to cut its target number of satellites, this is more to do with supplier issues than problem with Telesat itself.⁶

Telesat is a legitimate and reliable enterprise-focused company. It’s been around for a long time—since 1969, in fact, and it’s therefore been in the satellite business longer than many other companies.

Telesat also lays claim to the first domestic communications satellite in geostationary orbit to be operated by a commercial company (the Anik A1—see below).⁷ In other words, the company has a lot of experience and seems to know what it’s doing. So we’d say it’s pretty good.

The Anik A1 was the first communications satellite in geostationary orbit operated by a commercial company. It was launched in 1972 and retired in 1981. This was Telesat’s first major undertaking as a Canadian Crown company, and it’s what proved Telesat viable.

Telesat is potentially a competitor to Starlink in the corporate world, but the two don’t compete in the consumer-facing world of home internet. Telesat is strictly business-to-business and seems to have no interest in transitioning to home internet service.

Starlink, Hughesnet, and Viasat are the way to go if you’re looking for satellite internet for home, personal, or small business use. In particular, we think Hughesnet is the best option for most people.

Telesat is owned by Loral Space, a satellite communications company based in Delaware. The company acquired Telesat in 2007.

Well, the short answer is no—Telesat isn’t a consumer-facing satellite internet company, so you probably can’t get it, unless you happen to own a large business or work for the government.

That said, it does offer significant infrastructure around the world, and there’s a good chance someone you know uses Telesat internet at work, whether they realize it or not.

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