Eutelsat Orders Satellite, Expands African Broadband Offering Plans

Eutelsat ordered a high-throughput satellite from Thales Alenia Space as part of its effort to bring broadband connectivity services to Africa, it said in a news release Wednesday. The satellite, using Thales' new Spacebus Neo platform, will launch in 2019 with the aim of providing at least 75 Gbps of capacity across a 65-spotbeam network, Eutelsat said. The satellite follows a joint announcement by Eutelsat and Facebook earlier this month that they plan to use Spacecom's AMOS-6 satellite to jointly provide broadband in much of Sub-Saharan Africa (see 1510050037).