Stephane Miljours, Director of Business Products and IoT at Terrestar Solutions tests IoT (Internet of Things) devices in the field.ROGER LEMOYNE/The Globe and Mail
The chair of Montreal-based satellite company Terrestar says that to compete with American giants, it intends to partner with other “middle power” countries to build a global direct-to-cell satellite network.
André Tremblay, Terrestar’s current chair and former chief executive officer, said that the only way for countries without the scale of the United States or China to compete and be globally relevant is by building interoperable, open networks rather than relying on “fragmented national one-offs.”
“We need to be able to link middle power to bridge enough strength to compete,” Mr. Tremblay said, referencing the speech recently given by Prime Minister Mark Carney at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
In that speech, Mr. Carney said the world’s “middle powers” should act together to maintain autonomy and strengthen their economies. “If we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” he said.
Terrestar is hoping to raise about $500-million for the development of a low-Earth-orbit (LEO) to offer mobile cellphone services over satellite, a technology that would help to fill in Canada’s many cellphone dead zones where ground-based networks do not exist, with plans to launch test runs as early as next year, he said.
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It is designing that constellation based on widely adopted standards to avoid a “walled garden” ecosystem, he said, a term used to describe networks where a single provider owns and controls all the hardware, applications and data.
As satellites spend only a small percentage of their total orbit time over Canada, partnering with other companies and countries is necessary to help spread the costs, Mr. Tremblay said. “It’s unthinkable to build an asset that expensive that will pay you only 2 or 3 per cent of the time,” he said.
Mr. Tremblay said the company is in discussions with potential partners in Scandinavia and other European markets, in an approach that includes collaboration with operators, technology vendors, integrators and satellite manufacturers across multiple jurisdictions.
“Global co-operation is the only structurally viable way to deliver competitive, resilient, and affordable direct‑to‑mobile services for Canadians over the long term,” he said.
The company intends to deliver direct-to-mobile service through carrier partnerships, as opposed to directly to consumers.
In Canada, two major telecoms have announced partnerships to offer the service, with U.S.-based companies: Rogers Communications Inc. offers a satellite feature using Elon Musk’s Starlink networks, and BCE Inc.’s Bell Canada has said it plans to do the same in 2026 through a partnership with AST SpaceMobile Inc.
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SpaceX, which owns Starlink, has also applied to the U.S. telecom regulator to launch its own direct-to-cell service though a new constellation of 15,000 LEO satellites, inside the United States and wherever else it is authorized to operate.
However, Terrestar says there are still important gaps to fill, including the need for a sovereign, Canadian-based provider, network backup, and a focus on the polar regions.
On Thursday, Terrestar is also launching a new network for Internet of Things devices in Canada. This service allows customers to connect internet-enabled devices such as sensors to equipment, then link those devices to both satellite and terrestrial-based wireless systems using a single SIM card.
Mr. Tremblay says the benefit of this technology is that it can act as a bridge when one type of service is not reliable or available – in rural areas where mobile networks don’t exist, or underground or in buildings, where satellite-based signals cannot penetrate.
The applications could include monitoring the status of mining or agricultural vehicles, or tracking the location of shipping containers or the progress of forest fires.
Similar to how it is designing its LEO constellation, TerreStar has designed its Internet of Things network based on an open-standards model, Mr. Tremblay said. This means that customers can swap out components or vendors without rebuilding the entire system, and avoid getting locked into systems that could be affected by tariff changes, he said.
Terrestar is not the only company offering a hybrid Internet of Things service in Canada. Last week, New Zealand-based space company Rivir signed a deal with Rogers to offer a similar service over Rogers and Starlink’s networks, according to a LinkedIn post by the company’s chief executive officer, Hamish Hutton.