Chris Forrester — Once upon a time – and this is a true story – when interviewing Roman Bausch (SES CEO 1995-2014) in 2012 he said SES would not invest in building a LEO fleet. Instead, and behind the scenes at the time, SES was talking with O3b (“the Other 3 Billion”), where it already had an investment position and which had been founded by serial entrepreneur Greg Wyler in 2007 with help from S...
The strongest version of this narrative highlights SES’s strategic pivot from geostationary dominance to a multi-orbit future, leveraging MEO’s advantages in latency and flexibility. The company’s investments in O3b, mPOWER, and now meoSphere demonstrate a calculated bet on MEO’s commercial viability, backed by partnerships with innovative firms like K2 Space and SWISSto12. The move aligns with broader industry trends toward hybrid satellite networks, where GEO, MEO, and LEO complement each othe...