PARIS — Satellite services provider Telespazio will furnish more than 350 megahertz of satellite bandwidth — equivalent to nine satellite transponders — to sister company DRS Defense Solutions for use by the U.S. Department of Defense under a one-year, $22 million contract, Telespazio announced.
The contract calls for Telespazio to use satellite capacity it has leased from fleet operator Eutelsat of Paris and includes an option to extend the lease for four more years.
Rome-based Telespazio is majority-owned by Italy’s Finmeccania aerospace conglomerate, which owns DRS Defense Solutions of Parsipanny, N.J.
In addition to reselling commercial satellite capacity, Telespazio has access to Italy’s Sicral military communications satellites and the future Athena-Fidus military broadband spacecraft as part of a partnership agreement with the Italian government.
“In the past three years, Telespazio has reached a total of more than 600 megahertz of leased satellite capacity and now has more than 12 dedicated uplink stations working almost exclusively for the U.S. government,” Telespazio said in a March 13 statement.
