Evidence of meeting #13 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was satellites.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10:45 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Telesat Canada
None of that would come into play. All of those statutory protections and whatnot would continue to apply to—
10:45 a.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is a really interesting meeting today, and I commend the witnesses for that.
I want to clarify a few things technically in terms of my understanding of how the system works.
Mr. Goldberg, do all Canadian distributors using satellites use Telesat or this other Canadian competitor of yours?
10:45 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Telesat Canada
Do all BDUs use us? Probably directly or indirectly.
For instance, Rogers isn't a customer of ours, but it's probably the case that some of the signals they ultimately put over their own cable infrastructure are off our satellites. Equally, all the BDUs, I would say, are also receiving signals from non-Telesat satellites.
10:45 a.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
Okay, and if they are, it's the BDU itself that would be subject to broadcasting rules as opposed to the satellite provider.
10:45 a.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
The next question comes from Brian Masse's question earlier, and I just want to have an understanding in terms of coverage.
You say that one satellite covers a third of the earth's surface, right?
10:45 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Telesat Canada
A satellite is capable of covering a third of the earth. The larger the footprint, the more diffuse the energy that's coming down from the satellite, which means the less powerful the signal is.
So again I'll use the flashlight analogy. Ideally, there's sort of a trade-off. You want to cover large geographic areas, but you also want your satellite to be reasonably powerful. The more powerful the signal is, the smaller the dish on the ground can be that's receiving the signal. That's important if you're providing direct-to-home satellite services. You don't want massive dishes hanging outside people's balconies and whatnot. And the more powerful the signal, the more bits you can get through that signal, the more throughput you can get.
10:45 a.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
Using an example that we might be familiar with, I have Bell ExpressVu at home. When they're sending that signal down, are they covering the entire footprint of Canada with that signal? They're not covering a third of the world, but there's no sense for them to send it beyond our borders.
10:45 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Telesat Canada
That's exactly right.
With the satellites we provide to ExpressVu, the coverage is tailored over the entire Canadian land mass.
Now again, you've heard us say that satellites don't respect national signals. It's not like at the border there's a hard cut-off. But you'd be surprised at just how much we can tailor the power. Once you get south of the border, the power really starts falling off and you need a bigger and bigger dish to receive that signal.
10:45 a.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
Is any satellite that would be in Canadian airspace, so to speak, fully capable of covering Canada? Even if it were above Vancouver, could it still—
10:45 a.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
Its footprint would be enough to take it to the far...?
10:45 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Telesat Canada
Yes. We think about it in terms of longitudes. When you think about that portion of the geostationary arc over Canada, it's probably the case that any geostationary satellite in the portion of the arc located between 65 degrees west longitude on the eastern side and probably, call it, 130 degrees west longitude can see all of Canada.
Ideally, you want to be over the middle, because the further out to one side you are.... Just picture the satellite up in the sky way over the east; if you're all the way out at the Queen Charlotte Islands, your dish is going to be more or less looking at the horizon. Ideally the satellite is right above the dish, so that there are no line-of-sight pointing issues and the like.
10:45 a.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
Would there be a competitive advantage simply because of the footprint we have in Canada—the amount of airspace we have in relation to other countries that are near us, particularly the U.S.? On the northern border, you would probably be able to reach into parts of Europe and Asia. Is there any kind of competitive advantage there for Canada? How much of the world can you cover from Canadian airspace, if you draw—
10:45 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Telesat Canada
All of the geostationary satellites are over the equator. You see as far north and as far south as you can from those slots. We have some challenges here in terms of providing services for arctic sovereignty purposes. Once you start getting away up to the northern pole or towards the southern pole, the coverage given by geostationary satellites is prejudiced.
10:50 a.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
I wasn't thinking about that: geostationary satellites are all over the equator. So none of them are over Canadian airspace anyway.
10:50 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Telesat Canada
Again, they're capable of seeing Canada.
10:50 a.m.
Conservative
10:50 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Telesat Canada
No, they're all over the equator.
10:50 a.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
Right.
Here is one last question, and it's in a totally different direction; it has to do with just your company.
How did Telesat get to the size it is now? You talk about your being fourth in the world in size right now, relatively. Has that always been the case? What's the historical relative size and—
10:50 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Telesat Canada
There are two ways, just as we alluded to in our comments. It's been a combination of organic growth and some inorganic growth.
Up until 2007, it was all a function of organic growth, just building one satellite after the other, getting them up there, building the base of the business, building the revenue stream, and the like. Then in 2007, when Bell Canada sold us, one of the companies that acquired us—it was PSP Investments, the Canadian pension fund—and Loral....
Loral operated a smaller satellite operator that didn't really provide service in North America. I mentioned that we had two satellites licensed by the FCC, one in Brazil and one in Tonga. Those all came over from Loral.
In 2007, we took that business, integrated it into Telesat—Telesat was larger—and overnight grew the size of our fleet by 50% and grew our geographic reach from a North American-focused company to a global company. Now, our global coverage is a little thin; we only have a few satellites serving those overseas markets.
So that's how we got to where we are today: a lot of organic growth, and then we were catapulted to a larger global position through this merger with Loral.
From that time, we've launched probably another four satellites. I mentioned that we have two more under construction, soon to be three. It's been a combination of those two.
And that's my expectation going forward. It's a combination of more organic growth, but it has to be complemented and accelerated by inorganic growth, and that's the area in which we need the restrictions removed.
