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SES owns and operates a fleet of satellites that beam television channels, internet service, and data to customers around the world.
SES is a satellite operator. It owns a fleet of satellites parked in orbit, and it sells the capacity on those satellites to other companies. A TV broadcaster pays SES to carry its channels down to millions of homes. A telecom company or internet provider pays SES to connect places that fiber cables can't easily reach, like ships at sea, planes in the air, remote villages, and oil rigs. Governments pay for secure military communications. SES doesn't make the content or run the phone network — it just rents out the pipes in the sky.
The business splits into two big pieces. One is the traditional video business: beaming TV channels to broadcasters and pay-TV platforms, especially in Europe. That business is steady but shrinking as people switch to streaming over the internet. The other, faster-growing piece is networks — selling satellite bandwidth for internet, mobile backhaul, and government and military use. SES also has a big stake in O3b, a constellation of satellites in a much lower orbit, which cuts the delay in the signal and makes satellite internet feel far more like a normal broadband connection. Here's the basic problem satellites solve. A fiber cable is fantastic until you need to reach a ship in the middle of the Pacific or a village in a mountain valley — then laying cable is impossible or absurdly expensive. A satellite covers everything beneath it, so one piece of hardware in space serves customers spread across a continent. That reach is why customers pay SES: not because it's the cheapest way to move data, but because it's the only way to reach some places at all. The industry is changing fast and not comfortably. Starlink and other low-orbit constellations have flooded the market with cheap, fast internet, pressuring the old geostationary players. SES responded by buying Intelsat, a major rival, in a deal completed in 2025, betting that size and a combined fleet would let it compete. The company also earns steady cash from long-term contracts and pays a dividend, but investors worry about expensive satellite replacements and whether the merged business can grow faster than the legacy TV revenue declines.
Saved answer · last researched 21 Oct 2026
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