Rebecca Cowen-Hirsch on Inmarsat’s Global Xpress 5 Satellite

Inmarsat is seeking to meet increased U.S. military and commercial demand for more bandwidth in the Middle East and Europe with its Global Xpress 5 communications satellite, C4ISRNET reported Thursday.

“We’ve got our worldwide coverage, and now we look and see where do we need additional capacity,” said Rebecca Cowen-Hirsch, senior vice president of government strategy and policy at Inmarsat Government. “GX5, adding to that mix, looks at an area where we’ve got increased and significant demand. It is a very, very dense environment for commercial as well as military. So we’ve got a satellite that was specifically put to cover that particular region.”

GX5 launched in November and is set to enter service in early 2020. The satellite will focus on servicing the commercial aviation and maritime passenger Wi-Fi markets.