On Monday, Quintillion, a privately-held, Alaska-headquartered provider of telecommunications infrastructure for polar latitudes, announced the operational launch of the highest latitude satellite ground station on U.S. soil. According to a company announcement, Quintillion’s new Arctic ground station in Utqiagvik, for which construction was completed earlier this year, will be directly connected via fiber to an Equinix SE2 International Business Exchange (IBX) data center in Seattle, Washington.
From Seattle, the Utqiagvik ground station will connect to Equinix Fabric, a software-based solution that allows companies to connect their distributed infrastructure to each other on a platform operated by Equinix, the data center owner.
The ground station, operated in conjunction with ATLAS Space Operations, is located at 72 degrees latitude in Utqiagvik on the north slope of Alaska. The 3.7-meter antenna operates in the S and X bands and expects to see up to 12 polar orbiting satellite passes per day. Quintillion’s Utqiagvik station will not only serve as a crucial crossroad between space and terrestrial communications, but as a critical landing point on Quintillion’s broader network map, which it is developing as the foundation for American economic and security advancement in the Arctic.
Quintillion says that satellite ground network infrastructure is on the cusp of “a fundamental change.” New developments, such as small cubesats, software-defined payloads, new multi-orbit and multi-band satellite architectures, advancements in electronically steered antenna technology and cloud-based analytics, are making space an exciting but increasingly complex and changing marketplace. Investments in sectors like space hardware, satellite communications, and sat-to-ground (EO, TT&C) have the potential to drastically alter the dynamics of an otherwise matured, five-decade old industry.
“Space communications is an important component in many enterprises’ overall digital strategies. As the world’s digital infrastructure company, Equinix is meeting these critical needs by advancing our next-generation platform strategy to include satellite access and assist our customers’ IT transformation efforts,” said Jim Poole, Equinix’s Vice President of Business Development, in a comment on the partnership.
“Satellite customers can dynamically scale their digital infrastructure needs by accessing the ecosystem of service providers at Equinix, without needing to worry about building all of the infrastructure themselves,” he added.
“Polar orbiting satellite operators now have a choice to deliver their data at high latitude, on U.S. soil and directly connected to Equinix data centers in Seattle,” said Quintillion Chief Revenue Officer Michael McHale. “This partnership will simplify the downlinking and processing of time-sensitive data for polar orbiting satellite operators.”
Besides the Utqiagvik station, Quintillion has previously built (and still owns and operates) a submarine and terrestrial high-speed fiber optic cable system that spans the Alaskan Arctic and connects to the lower 48 contiguous U.S. states. The planned three-phase Quintillion subsea cable system will ultimately connect Asia to the American Pacific Northwest, and to Western Europe via the Northwest Pass through the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic.
