SES Lifts Off Two More O3b mPOWER Satellites in Bid to Close Connectivity Gap

SES, the Luxembourg-headquartered satellite operator, lifted two more O3b mPOWER satellites into medium-earth orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 on Friday night, bringing the second-generation constellation to nine active spacecraft and triggering a long-awaited capacity unlock across the Pacific service ring.

From the operations centre in Betzdorf, mission director Anne Lucas called the deployment "a clean separation, clean acquisition" — the eighth and ninth mPOWER birds had completed their first contact pass within ninety minutes of liftoff. The constellation, designed by Boeing and built around fully software-defined beams, is the centrepiece of SES's strategy to compete with low-earth-orbit rivals like Starlink and OneWeb on enterprise and government broadband.

What changes for customers

Adding satellites eight and nine means SES can finally activate "any-to-any" routing across the full Pacific footprint, a capability the company has been selling to cruise lines, mining operators, and the U.S. Department of Defense since 2023 but has only been able to deliver in restricted form.

Group CEO Adel Al-Saleh told analysts on a follow-up call that the in-service capacity now exceeds 5 Tbps and will reach roughly 9 Tbps once the planned 11-satellite cluster is complete in mid-2026.

Pricing pressure

The deployment lands in a hardening market. OneWeb's Eutelsat-backed parent has been quoting aggressively to enterprise customers in Africa and Latin America, and Starlink Maritime has cut its top tier by roughly 22% over the past year. SES's response, Al-Saleh said, is "differentiated SLA, not undercutting" — a reference to the constellation's higher latency floor but stronger jitter and packet-loss guarantees.