SES Americom

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SES AMERICOM
Private company
Industry Telecommunications
Fate Merged
Successor SES World Skies
Founded 1975 (as RCA Americom)
Defunct 2009
Headquarters Princeton, New Jersey, United States
Area served
 North America
Products Satellite services
Revenue €261.7 million (Q1-Q3 2008)[1]
€63.2 million (Q1-Q3 2008)[1]
Number of employees
 414 (2007)
Parent SES S.A.

SES Americom was a major commercial satellite operator of North American geosynchronous satellites based in the United States. The company started as RCA Americom in 1975 before being bought by General Electric in 1986 and then later acquired by SES S.A. in 2001. In September 2009, SES Americom and SES New Skies merged into SES World Skies.[2]

History

RCA American Communications (RCA Americom) was founded in 1975 as an operator of RCA Astro Electronics-built satellites. The company's first satellite; Satcom 1, was launched on December 12, 1975. Satcom 1 was one of the earliest geostationary satellites.

Satcom 1 was instrumental in helping early cable TV channels (such as Superstation TBS and CBN) to become initially successful, because these channels distributed their programming to all of the local cable TV headends using the satellite. Additionally, it was the first satellite used by broadcast TV networks in the United States, like ABC, NBC, and CBS, to distribute their programming to all of their local affiliate stations. The reason that Satcom 1 was so widely used is that it had twice the communications capacity of the competing Westar 1 (24 transponders as opposed to Westar 1’s 12), which resulted in lower transponder usage costs.

14 more (increasingly sophisticated) Satcom satellites would enter service from 1976 to 1992. In 1986 General Electric acquired RCA and renamed the Americom unit to GE American Communications (GE Americom). From 1996 new satellites were named in the GE-# series, i.e. GE-1 in 1996, GE-2 in 1997 etc.

SES purchase

In November 2001, GE sold its GE Americom unit to SES for $5 billion in cash and stock. As a result of the sale, GE Americom was renamed to SES Americom and SES Global was formed as the parent company. SES's existing operations were moved into the newly created SES Astra subsidiary.[3][4]

After the acquisition of GE Americom by SES, all the satellites previously named with the GE-# prefix were renamed to AMC-# (i.e., GE-1 renamed to AMC-1, and so on).[5]

The President and CEO of the new SES Americom was Dean Olmstead.[6] He left the company in 2004 and was succeeded by Edward Horowitz. SES Americom was subsequently placed under Robert Bednarek, the President and CEO of SES New Skies.[7]

In September 2009, SES Americom and SES New Skies were re-branded SES World Skies.[8]

Satellite Fleet

Before being merged into SES World Skies in 2009 (which expanded coverage to Middle East and Africa), SES Americom operated the following North American satellites in geosynchronous orbit:[9]

Satellite Position Manufacturer Model Launched Launch vehicle Comments
AMC-1 103°W Lockheed Martin A2100A September 8, 1996 Atlas IIA [citation needed]
AMC-2 101°W Lockheed Martin A2100A January 30, 1997 Ariane 44L Replaced by SES-1[10]
AMC-3 87°W Lockheed Martin A2100A September 4, 1997 Atlas IIAS [citation needed]
AMC-4 101°W Lockheed Martin A2100AX November 13, 1999 Ariane 44LP Replaced by SES-1[10]
AMC-5 79°W Alcatel Space Spacebus 2000 October 28, 1998 Ariane 44L [citation needed]
AMC-6 72°W Lockheed Martin A2100AX October 22, 2000 Proton-K/DM-2 [citation needed]
AMC-7 137°W Lockheed Martin A2100A September 14, 2000 Ariane 5G [citation needed]
AMC-8 139°W Lockheed Martin A2100A December 19, 2000 Ariane 5G [citation needed]
AMC-9 83°W Alcatel Space Spacebus 3000B3 June 7, 2003 Proton-K/Briz-M[11]
AMC-10 135°W Lockheed Martin A2100A February 5, 2004 Atlas IIAS[12]
AMC-11 131°W Lockheed Martin A2100A May 19, 2004 Atlas IIAS[13]
AMC-12 37.5°W Alcatel Alenia Space Spacebus 4000C3 Feb 3, 2005 Proton-M/Briz-M[14] Renamed NSS-10[15]
AMC-14[16] 61.5°W (planned) Lockheed Martin A2100 March 14, 2008 Proton-M/Briz-M Launch failure[17]
AMC-15 105°W Lockheed Martin A2100AX October 15, 2004 Proton-M/Briz-M[18]
AMC-16 85°W Lockheed Martin A2100AX December 17, 2004 Atlas V (521)[19]
AMC-18 105°W Lockheed Martin A2100A December 8, 2006 Ariane 5-ECA Replaced AMC-2 previously at 105°W
Satcom C3 79°W GE AstroSpace GE-3000 September 10, 1992 Ariane 44LP Inclined orbit
AMC-21 125°W Thales Alenia Space / Orbital Sciences Corporation STAR-2 August 14, 2008 Ariane 5-ECA[20]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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