Turkey on Tuesday put into service its latest telecommunication satellite that will offer services over Turkey, the Middle East and parts of Africa, in what President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan dubbed a new phase in the country’s space journey.
Türksat 5B satellite was launched in December on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral in Florida. It was launched to geostationary transfer orbit, where it reached 42 degrees East to provide high throughput Ka and Ku-band services.
“The Türksat 5B satellite will make our TV and broadband satellite capacity uninterrupted from Africa and the Middle East to Asia,” Erdoğan told a ceremony in Ankara. “Geographical problems will now disappear. Everyone will be able to use the internet easily from anywhere.”
The orbiter that will serve for 30 years will ensure that the “frequency and territorial rights of our country are also protected,” Erdoğan said.
Erdoğan stressed that Türksat 5B would add pace to Turkey’s efforts to further extend communication and internet infrastructure. He said it would provide support to disaster and emergency services to maintain communication in rural and mountainous areas.
“Expansion of the fiber internet infrastructure is another issue that we must definitely solve. We are aware that we are proceeding slowly on this issue,” Erdoğan said, adding that the government would incentivize companies in the field to ensure rapid development. “We will also support the establishment of a common structure that will take fiber to the countryside. We will also quickly remove the obstacles to the rapid dissemination of fiber infrastructure. We will have made our country ready for 5G.”
“We will have completed the fiber infrastructure in a short time in the same way we had equipped our country with roads and airports in the last 20 years,” Erdoğan said.
Türksat 5B will increase the number of Turkey’s active communication satellites to five and the total number of satellites to eight, a figure that Erdoğan said would soon reach 10.
The production of the domestic Türksat 6A satellite is also ongoing in Ankara, where assembly, integration and tests are being carried out. The orbiter will be to be sent into space in mid-2023, Erdoğan said.
