It seems, despite much confusion and the departure of Thierry Breton, the EC Commissioner with oversight of the scheme, a Plan B contract for the IRIS2 (Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite) highly secure mega-constellation could be signed by the end of this year.

The reformed and much stripped-down consortium (comprising SES, Eutelsat and Hispasat) has reportedly submitted its numbers and schedule to the European Commission.

Sources close to the Commission suggest the final plan is to have 260 Low Earth orbiting satellites at 1,000 kms and 18 operating at Mid-Earth (MEO) heights of 8,000 kms. The 18 MEOs sound very much like SES’s existing O3b.mPOWER satellites while the 260 LEO’s sound very much like Eutelsat’s second-generation OneWeb craft.

The readiness date from the consortium is 2030, and the absolute aim is to have a guaranteed service that is highly resilient to jamming or cyber interference while the LEO/MEO mix offers low latency of signals.

The revised budget has not been revealed.

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Categories: Blogs, Broadband, Inside Satellite, Satellite

Tags: eutelsat, iris2, SES