SES Americom

SES AMERICOM

Type	Private company
Founded	1975
Headquarters	United States
Industry	Telecommunications
Products	Satellite services
Revenue	▲ € ? billion (2006)
Operating income	▲ € ? billion (2006)
Net income	▼ € ? billion (2006)
Employees	414 (2007)
Parent	SES S.A.
Website	SES Americom

SES Americom is a major commercial satellite operator based in the United States. Formerly RCA Americom and GE Americom the company is now (with SES Astra and SES New Skies) one of the principal parts of SES S.A. SES Americom is now re-branded as SES World Skies along with SES New Skies.

Satellite Fleet

SES Americom operates the following satellites:^[1]

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 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 2001 SES Global was formed by SES for the $4.3 billion acquisition of GE Americom, which was completed in November of that year. SES Global was established as the group management company; with the renamed SES Americom and SES Astra as subsidiaries.

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).

The President and CEO of SES Americom was Edward Horowitz. He has recently left the company and the search for a new president is in motion.

References

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2008)

See also

• SES S.A.
• SES Astra
• SES New Skies

External links

• SES Americom Official site