Optus has formed ‘Team Aussat’ with Raytheon Australia and Thales Australia to bid for the JP9102 Australia Defence Communication System program that will provide the next generation of satellite technology to the Australian Defence Force.
Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin said: “Team Aussat, has a unique proposition being the only team with an unrivalled history of owning and operating satellites in Australia, by Australians, for Australians – drawing synergies from two partner companies with their exceptional pedigrees in building and delivering world-class Defence capabilities.”
Aussat was the name of the government-owned Australian satellite operator created in the early 1980s. It was also 25 percent owned by then government owned Telecom Australia (the forerunner of Telstra) and, unable to compete effectively, incurred huge losses forcing the Government to sell it off, sweetening the deal with a licence to compete with Telecom. That was the genesis of Optus.
Rewriting history
Optus summed up the history thus: “Since 1985, Optus has been Australia’s preeminent satellite provider [Optus did not exist in 1985], launching 10 satellites, operating 13 spacecraft, and providing support to over 100 international space programs. Since 2003, Optus has flown the C1 Satellite – which provides critical mission capabilities for Defence’s operations and, at the time of launch, was the world’s largest Defence-civilian spacecraft.”
Optus currently operates satellites – including NBN’s 2 Skymuster Satellites and plans to deploy software-defined satellite Optus 11 in 2023 for Australia and New Zealand.
This, it says would make it the first satellite operator in Asia Pacific to launch a software-defined satellite that can provide both flexible concurrent broadcast and broadband services via a very high throughput satellite (VHTS) design.
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