Sponsors            Telesat’s New Telstar 12 VANTAGE Satellite Now Operational Three Weeks After Launch December 15, 2015 Telesat, a leading global satellite operator, announced today that its new Telstar 12 VANTAGE satellite is now fully operational at 15 degrees West. Telstar 12 VANTAGE was launched by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan on November 24th and is the first of a new generation of Telesat satellites with  capacity optimized to serve the types of bandwidth intensive applications increasingly in demand by users. Built by Airbus Defence and Space, Telstar 12 VANTAGE combines broad regional  beams and high throughput spot beams to increase capacity and offer superior performance for broadcasters as well as enterprise networks on the ground, in the air and at sea. It uses Ku-band for all customer services assuring backward compatibility with existing Ku-band terminal equipment. Among the advantages offered to customers is the capability of Telstar 12 VANTAGE to seamlessly connect the Americas to Europe and the Middle East from 15 West, one of the few orbital locations that enables such coverage. Satellite users in mobility, government, and energy markets now have even greater service options between EMEA and the Americas along with powerful new beams over Brazil, Sub-Saharan Africa, the South Atlantic, Caribbean, Mediterranean and North Sea. “Telstar 12 VANTAGE is a state-of-the-art spacecraft that combines broad regional beams and high throughput spot beams offering superior performance to our growing base of customers who require the very latest in satellite broadband,” said Dan Goldberg, Telesat’s President and CEO. “Telesat is pleased to be building on our leadership in mobility services, both maritime and aero, with powerful new coverage over the North Sea, the Mediterranean, Caribbean and the South Atlantic. I would like to congratulate the teams at Telesat and Airbus Defence and Space whose dedication and expertise enabled Telstar 12 VANTAGE to become fully operational just three weeks after launch, an impressive technical achievement.”