Intelsat is the leading provider of commercial satellite services to the government sector, according to NSR, with a 33 percent share of the U.S. military and government use of commercial satellite capacity worldwide. From remote military outposts, disaster recovery sites and U.S. embassies, to health and homeland security agencies, our solutions support the most complex, mission-critical operations anywhere on the globe. We provide a wide range of secure communications solutions for military and government applications with resiliency and flexibility that support a customer where agility is essential.
The trajectory of our government business reflects that this business is stabilizing after several years in which U.S. government sequestration and troop drawdowns weighed on our performance.
With a focus on serving the U.S. government, we have an opportunity to assist our customer as it strives to address global requirements with increasingly restricted budgets. Our commercial services provide additional resilience over government assets, and also create additional capabilities nearly instantly, allowing fast response in times of need.
Our strategy to grow this business includes providing mobility services to the U.S. government for aeronautical and maritime requirements, especially as our next generation Intelsat EpicNG SM services are activated. We are also positioning to provide satellite-related operations support as the government increasingly commercializes certain operational capabilities.
Intelsat General Corporation (“IGC”) and the American Forces Radio and Television Service (“AFRTS”) extended a one-year contract renewal to deliver radio and television programing to U.S. military forces serving around the world. The original one-year contract was signed in 2011 and had six, one-year renewal options. Under the contract with the AFRTS, IGC provides a global distribution network that delivers multi-channel, broadcast-quality radio and television programs to military forces and their families stationed outside of the U.S. as well as to military personnel aboard U.S. Navy ships at sea. The service, which incorporates both on-and off-network capacity, reaches more than 200,000 people using 307 MHz of bandwidth carried over nine satellites, six teleports, and the IntelsatOne® terrestrial network.
