The Telesat Alan Park Teleport located in Ottawa, Ontario in Canada

The Telesat Alan Park Teleport located in Ottawa, Ontario in Canada

Telesat Inc. (formerly Telesat Canada, Inc) is a satellite operator headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario in Canada. The company was founded in 1969 and has offices in the USA, Brazil and the UK. Telesat owns a fleet of 15 satellites and operates 13 additional satellites for other entities.

Telesat is, after Intelsat, SES and Eutelsat, the fourth-largest fixed satellite services provider in the world. Telesat was originally jointly owned by the federal government and the Canadian telecommunications consortium, Stentor Canadian Network Management. In 1992, the federal government sold its stake in Telesat Canada to Alouette Telecommunications, Ltd, a company jointly owned by Stentor, including Bell, and Spar Aerospace. Bell completed the acquisition of Telesat in 1998, when it acquired 100% ownership of Telesat. In 2007 Loral Space & Communications along with Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board acquired Telesat for 2.8 billion USD, with Loral owning 62.7% of Telesat.

Telesat carries Canada’s two major DBS providers signals: Bell TV and Shaw Direct, as well as more than 200 of Canada’s television channels.

Telesat’s Anik-F2 carries a ‘Spot Beam’ Ka-band payload for satellite Internet access for users in the United States and Canada. The Ka-band system uses ‘Spot Beams’ to manage bandwidth concerns, linking to multiple satellite ground stations connected to the Internet.

Telesat is also operating the Nimiq-series satellites, the DTH satellites that are serving customers in the USA and Canada. The Nimiq-1, -2, -4, -5 and -6 are located at 82° to 91° West.

In 2016 Telesat started their Low Earth Orbit project (Telesat Lightspeed LEO-project), a planned low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation network of 298 satellites, that will offer capacity for broadband internet. Telesat is targeting the project to serve backhaul needs for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), telcos, and Internet Service Providers (ISPs), along with aero, maritime, and government services. To finance the project Telesat merged in November 2020 with its major shareholder, Loral Space & Communications to become subsidiaries of Telesat Holdings, Inc.