But the ground station will also connect to at least 12 polar-orbiting satellites a day, allowing Quintillion to serve customers in the state.
“Polar orbiting satellite operators now have a choice to deliver their data at high latitude, on US soil and directly connected to Equinix data centres in Seattle,” said Michael McHale, chief revenue officer at Quintillion. “This partnership will simplify the downlinking and processing of time-sensitive data for polar orbiting satellite operators.”
Quintillion completed its ground station, at 72° north, at Utqiagvik on the north slope of Alaska, earlier this year, having partnered with Atlas Space Operations in late 2019. A 3.7m antenna operates in the S and X bands and the company expects to see up to 12 polar orbiting satellite passes a day.
“Space communications is an important component in many enterprises’ overall digital strategies,” said Jim Poole, Equinix’s vice president of business development. “Equinix is meeting these critical needs by advancing our next-generation platform strategy to include satellite access and assist our customers’ IT transformation efforts.”
Quintillion has a subsea fibre network that runs around the north and west coasts of Alaska and connects with terrestrial networks to the south coast and onwards — again via subsea fibre — to Seattle and other west coast points. Ultimately the company plans to extend its connections to Asia and north-western Europe.
Quintillion said this fibre will connect with Equinix’s SE2 international business exchange in Seattle, where it will connect to Equinix Fabric, a software-defined interconnection service.
Equinix said that “Equinix Fabric will enable Quintillion customers to tap into Equinix’s rich digital ecosystems and seamlessly connect with other physical or virtual services available on the trusted Platform Equinix.”
Poole said: “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.”
