Telesat<\/b>\u2019s Lightspeed Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation won\u2019t enter service until 2028 due to delays with the ASICs that power the satellites\u2019 onboard processors. <\/p>\n
The constellation was targeted to enter service around the end of 2027, but will now enter service around the end of the first quarter of 2028, CEO Dan Goldberg told investors on Tuesday. Telesat announced the schedule slip on Tuesday, along with its full year 2025 financial results.<\/p>\n
The change is due to delay with the application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) supplied by SatixFy. Goldberg said these chips were \u201cone of the key schedule risks\u201d on the program. MDA Space, Telesat\u2019s prime contractor, acquired SatixFy last year. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re tracking the development of these chips pretty forensically,\u201d Goldberg said. \u201cBased on the assurances we\u2019re getting from MDA, we feel good that the chips will be available in time to support the program schedule.\u201d <\/p>\n
Goldberg confirmed the first satellites are scheduled to launch at the end of this year, and Telesat has a \u201cheavy launch cadence\u201d planned throughout 2027. <\/p>\n
Separately, Telesat plans to add 500 MHz of military Ka-band (Mil-Ka) spectrum to 156 satellites in Lightspeed, to better meet the needs of defense and sovereignty programs. <\/p>\n
CEO Dan Goldberg explained to investors that Mil-Ka spectrum is adjacent to the commercial Ka-band spectrum used by Lightspeed, so this change won\u2019t have any adverse schedule impact and will have a \u201cmodest\u201d cost impact of around $25 million (U.S. dollars). <\/p>\n
Goldberg called this a \u201cmassive\u201d increase in bringing Mil-Ka band capacity to market, which has historically been in Geostationary Orbit (GEO) systems like Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) and the U.K.\u2019s Skynet. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just the sheer quantum of capacity we\u2019re bringing \u2014 the performance characteristics are so much more compelling. It\u2019s high throughput, low latency, distributed, which makes it more resilient. It covers the poles, which [aligns with the] heavy focus on the Arctic right now. We will be able to make that capability available, not just to the government of Canada, but to all of the allied nations, NATO, and other allied governments,\u201d Goldberg said. <\/p>\n
Goldberg explained that with Mil-Ka spectrum, Lightspeed will be \u201cbetter positioned\u201d to meet some of the requirements of Canada\u2019s Enhanced Satellite Communications Project \u2013 Polar (ESCP-P). Both Telesat and MDA Space signed a partnership agreement with the government in December for a multi-frequency, Arctic milsatcom capability. Goldberg said that contract is still under negotiation. <\/p>\n
Telesat\u2019s revenue declined by 27% in 2025, inline with the midpoint of guidance it gave last year. Telesat reported consolidated revenue of $418 million Canadian dollars ($305 million). <\/p>\n
The decrease was attributed to both rate and capacity reductions from North American direct-to-home (DTH) customers and lower revenue from enterprise customers serving rural broadband markets.<\/p>\n
Goldberg noted that the GEO business faces \u201cstructural challenges,\u201d but beat adjusted EBITDA guidance for 2025. Adjusted EBITDA for the full-year 2025 was CA$213 million ($155 million). <\/p>\n
\u201cWithin the constraints of what\u2019s essentially a fixed cost business, we\u2019ve optimized our cost structure where we can to maximize the cash flow of that business,\u201d Goldberg said of the GEO business. <\/p>\n
At the end of 2025, Telesat\u2019s GEO backlog was CA$800 million ($584 million). Lightspeed backlog was CA$1 billion ($730 million) at the end of the year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Telesat\u2019s Lightspeed Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation won\u2019t enter service until 2028 due to delays with the ASICs that power the satellites\u2019 onboard processors. The constellation was targeted to enter service around the end of 2027, but will now enter service around the end of the first quarter of 2028, CEO Dan Goldberg told investors on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47353"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}