en.Wedoany.com Reported - On June 2, Luxembourg-based satellite communications company SES announced a partnership with Colombian telecom and internet service provider TV ISLA to deploy high-throughput satellite connectivity services on Providencia Island in the San Andrés Archipelago. The project adopts a hybrid satellite communication solution combining Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to provide more reliable broadband access for approximately 7,000 island residents and visiting tourists.
Located in the Caribbean Sea, about 700 kilometers north of mainland Colombia, Providencia Island has long faced challenges such as insufficient communication capacity and unreliable infrastructure due to its remote location. The managed solution provided by SES will combine capacity from its own MEO constellation with LEO solutions supported by partner constellations, delivering over 500 Mbps of low-latency trunk capacity to the island. This capacity will support the rapid deployment of a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network, with plans to cover approximately 1,500 households in the coming months. For remote island communication scenarios, building new submarine fiber optic cables typically involves multiple constraints such as timelines, costs, approvals, and environmental impacts. Hybrid-orbit satellite communications can quickly supplement broadband trunk capacity, providing foundational connectivity for education, commerce, tourism, public services, and local digitalization.
The island was severely affected by Hurricane Iota in 2020, making communication resilience a key issue in subsequent infrastructure reconstruction.
The value of satellite communications in remote islands, mountainous areas, offshore facilities, and post-disaster recovery scenarios is shifting from "temporary backup" to a long-term infrastructure component. Single-orbit solutions often struggle to simultaneously balance capacity, coverage, latency, and stability. MEO can provide higher throughput and stable coverage, while LEO offers advantages in low latency and deployment flexibility. By adopting a hybrid-orbit architecture, SES and TV ISLA mean that operators no longer rely on a single satellite resource but combine different orbital capabilities based on geographic conditions, user scale, and business needs. For regions like Providencia Island, far from the mainland, combining satellite trunk capacity with local FTTH networks can transform "space-based connectivity" into fixed broadband services directly usable by residents, improving past issues of insufficient network capacity and unstable service experiences on remote islands.
TV ISLA and SES have previously collaborated on San Andrés Island, using MEO solutions to enhance local bandwidth capacity. The expansion to Providencia Island indicates that communication infrastructure construction in Colombia's Caribbean islands is evolving from single-point reinforcement to regional network upgrades. As remote work, online education, tourism services, digital payments, and public administration demand higher network quality, communication projects in remote island areas are no longer just basic livelihood projects but also impact local tourism, commercial vitality, and disaster response capabilities. The effectiveness of subsequent projects will be reflected in the speed of FTTH deployment, user access quality, operational stability, and recovery capabilities under extreme weather conditions.
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