16 June 2022

Telesat and Telefónica completed the first 5G Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite backhaul demonstration in Brazil and Latin America.

The testing campaign was managed with Telefónica Global Solutions (TGS), the Telefónica Group’s satellite service provider, with the help of its engineering teams together with those of Telesat. The Telesat Phase 1 LEO satellite layer 2 backhaul link was connected to TGS’s 5G test environment.

An 85cm Intellian gyro-stabilized Ka-band terminal with a 10 Watt BUC connected Telefónica Global Solutions’ data streams to the Phase 1 LEO, validating that a small, carrier-grade terminal can achieve the desired performance to properly support a 5G backhaul network.

“Building on our successful LEO test with Telesat in Europe, we were eager to evaluate the performance of the Phase 1 LEO integration with a 5G network,” said Eloy Rodríguez Villa, SVP global wholesale customers, Telefónica Global Solutions. “With the performance results achieved being close to fibre connectivity, Telesat Lightspeed provides a compelling value proposition for our 5G network rollouts across the globe.”

Numerous applications were tested across the satellite backhaul link, including upload and download speed, as well as video streaming. Network measurements of latency, jitter and bitrate were recorded throughout the testing campaign – they all met the functional requirements for integration with a 5G core network.

Mauro Wajnberg, general manager, Telesat Brasil, described satellite backhaul as a perfect application for Telesat Lightspeed, “with the ability to deliver multiple Gbps into remote communities with transformative performance and economics”.