'Complicated' Ku-Band Traffic Handoff Coming for SES-15, SES Says

With the handoff of traffic of Ku-band traffic from AMC-1 to SES-15 looking to be "unusually complicated," SES is asking for FCC International Bureau approval to modify its authority to serve the U.S. market with SES-15 from 129.15 degrees west. In an application Thursday, SES said AMC-1 is being relocated from that orbital slot to 130.9 degrees west before SES-15 arrives, but it wants to provide overlapping services from both orbital locations during AMC-1's drift. It said the traffic transfer complication is because AMC-1 is a traditional wide-beam satellite while SES-15 is a high-throughput satellite with multiple spot beams, so dual illumination of the two when they're collocated isn't technically feasible since the wide area beam and spot beams would cause interference. It also said customers' network configurations are very different on SES-15, and customers need more time to configure and test their networks on it.