Orange and Telesat have commissioned the first European gateway for the planned Telesat Lightspeed low Earth orbit satellite constellation. The gateway, installed at Orange’s Bercenay-en-Othe teleport in France, is intended to give enterprise and government users a new ground connection for secure, reliable and low-latency communications.
The companies said the facility is installed and commissioned. Orange will provide the ground network that connects the station to Telesat’s planned Paris point of presence, while the gateway becomes part of the terrestrial infrastructure planned for the Lightspeed network. Telesat said the initial constellation is expected to comprise 225 satellites.
For network teams, a gateway is the point where satellite capacity joins terrestrial infrastructure. In this deployment, the French site is intended to provide the high availability and low latency required for mission-critical applications, according to the companies. The companies did not provide performance measurements, service-level commitments or a date when customers can begin using the new connection.
The gateway uses advanced antennas supplied by Intellian Technologies and is hosted in Orange’s World Teleport Association Tier-4 certified facility. Orange said it selected the Bercenay-en-Othe location for its operational capabilities, security certifications and ability to integrate new technologies. The company also provides the secure, high-speed connection from the teleport to the planned Paris presence.
Telesat is designing Lightspeed with optical inter-satellite links. The company said that architecture is intended to allow customer traffic to remain in space until it reaches a Telesat landing station or a customer’s private landing facility. It said that model is designed to give enterprise, telecom, government and defense users more routing flexibility, data sovereignty and control.
Orange said the facility also supports its goal of hosting more satellite operators at Bercenay-en-Othe. If that develops as planned, the site could become a more important ground-infrastructure hub for next-generation satellite networks. The companies did not identify additional operators or describe commercial terms for any further gateway deployments.
The installed gateway is infrastructure for a network that is still being built. Telesat expects global service to begin in the first quarter of 2028, and the companies describe the France installation as a deployment milestone rather than a commercial service launch. That distinction matters for organizations planning resilience or remote-site connectivity: the ground gateway is ready, but the broader constellation has not yet entered service.
The companies also highlighted the network’s software-defined design. Telesat said customers will be able to dynamically manage their services and create differentiated end-to-end connectivity offerings. The company does not describe the management interface, available automation workflows, access controls or integrations with enterprise network-management platforms, so prospective users will need those details before assessing operational fit.
For IT and network operations, the immediate significance is the addition of a European ground node for a planned low Earth orbit service that targets low-latency, resilient connectivity. Once the constellation is operational, the architecture could give organizations another option for connecting distributed sites and critical workloads. Its practical value will depend on service availability, integration with existing networks and the operational controls that accompany the promised software-defined service management.