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SES Americom

 
Hoover's Profile: SES AMERICOM, Inc.
Contact Information
SES AMERICOM, Inc.
4 Research Way
Princeton, NJ 08540-6686
NJ Tel. 609-987-4000
Toll Free 800-273-0329
Fax 609-987-4517

Type: Subsidiary
On the web: http://www.ses-americom.com

SES AMERICOM oversees communications from Canada to Central America. Operating a fleet of 17 satellites, the company provides telecommunications services in the Americas. SES AMERICOM offers programming feeds and uplink service to cable operators, radio networks, and broadcast television networks. It also supplies back-up communications systems for dispersed enterprises and leases access to virtual network operators wanting to resell satellite-based Internet service and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). SES AMERICOM is a subsidiary of Luxembourg-based SES.

Officers:
Chairman: Romain Bausch
COO: James (Jim) Ducay
SVP and CFO: Robert (Rob) Kisilywicz

Competitors:
Globalstar
Intelsat
Iridium Satellite

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Wikipedia: SES Americom
Top
SES AMERICOM
Type Private company
Founded 1975
Headquarters United States 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.

Contents

Satellite Fleet

SES Americom operates the following satellites:[1]

Satellite Position Manufacturer Model Launched Launch vehicle Comments
AMC-1 103°W Lockheed Martin A2100A September 8, 1996 Atlas IIA
AMC-2 101°W Lockheed Martin A2100A January 30, 1997 Ariane 44L co-located with AMC-4
AMC-3 87°W Lockheed Martin A2100A September 4, 1997 Atlas IIAS
AMC-4 101°W Lockheed Martin A2100AX November 13, 1999 Ariane 44LP
AMC-5 79°W Alcatel Space Spacebus 2000 October 28, 1998 Ariane 44L
AMC-6 72°W Lockheed Martin A2100AX October 22, 2000 Proton-K/DM-2
AMC-7 137°W Lockheed Martin A2100A September 14, 2000 Ariane 5G
AMC-8 139°W Lockheed Martin A2100A December 19, 2000 Ariane 5G
AMC-9 83°W Alcatel Space Spacebus 3000B3 June 7, 2003 Proton-K/Briz-M
AMC-10 135°W Lockheed Martin A2100A February 5, 2004 Atlas IIAS
AMC-11 131°W Lockheed Martin A2100A May 19, 2004 Atlas IIAS
AMC-12 37.5°W Alcatel Alenia Space Spacebus 4000C3 Feb 3, 2005 Proton-M/Briz-M
AMC-15 105°W Lockheed Martin A2100AX October 15, 2004 Proton-M/Briz-M
AMC-16 85°W Lockheed Martin A2100AX December 17, 2004 Atlas V (521)
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-14[2] 61.5°W (planned) Lockheed Martin A2100 March 14, 2008 Proton-M/Briz-M Launch failure[3]
AMC-21 125°W Thales Alenia Space / Orbital Sciences Corporation STAR-2 2008-08-14 Ariane 5-ECA
Planned:
AMC-5R 79°W Orbital Sciences Corporation STAR-2 H2 2009
AMC-1R 103°W Orbital Sciences Corporation STAR-2 H2 2009 Land Launch Zenit-3SLB[4]

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

See also

External links


 
 

 

Copyrights:

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