At the recent Satellite 2025 conference in Washington, DC, the March 11 opening seassion was a fireside chat with Telesat president and CEO Dan Goldberg.
The interview host was the Satellite Guest Host Sarah Cruddas, a veteran journalist.
The conversation with Goldberg highlighted the company’s ambitious plans for its Lightspeed low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation, emphasizing its role in meeting the surging demand for secure, low-latency broadband connectivity.
Goldberg said that despite challenges such as COVID-related delays and supply chain issues, Telesat leveraged technological advancements to improve efficiency and cut costs. Goldberg stressed the importance of adaptability in the fast-changing satellite industry, balancing risk-taking with the company’s legacy expertise. He also discussed the integration of cutting-edge technologies, including AI and optical inter-satellite links, and addressed concerns about space sustainability and collision avoidance.
The approximate 25 minute interview transcript is available below.
Sarah Cruddas – Hello, good morning. Welcome again to Dan Goldberg – CEO, tell us out. I think he deserves another round of applause. I just wanted to say I appreciate the large crowd at 8:30 in the morning. So thank you to all of you for turning up, and it’s going to be a great conversation. I know you’re a friend of the show and have been here for many years, Dan. So we have a lot to talk about.
We’ve got 25 minutes, and we’ll have around five minutes of questions. You can use the iPad, where you can message in the questions as well. So do be thinking of those. I’m sure lots of people have questions for you, Dan, but first of all, I think we should start by talking about Telesat I do want to move on to the industry as a whole, and also kind of the future, but just you can keep us up to speed. No pun intended, with Lightspeed, and what you’re doing at the moment and where you’re at and why? Just to make a triple question for you, why what you’re doing is so exciting, and why, despite all this challenges, now is a good time to tell us that and what you’re doing with Lightspeed.
Dan Goldberg – Okay, nice to see everyone. Nice to be here with you, Sarah. So tell us that right now we are, as probably most of you know, one of the long standing communication satellite service providers. We’ve been at this for, gosh, I think 56 years now, and we have a fleet of geostationary satellites providing video distribution, broadband services all over the world. But we are, as you alluded to, well, on our way to launching and bringing into service a very advanced low Earth orbit satellite constellation for global broadband connectivity, you know, mostly focused B2B enterprise market, with a focus on government services as well. I’m happy to say that after some years of effort trying to move the, I mean, it’s a very ambitious, multi billion dollar project forward. You know, we securing the funding for that was not a trivial exercise, but, but we’re, we’re good to go right now.
So we closed all of the financing, the funding that we required to build this global constellation, we have already invested about a billion and a half dollars on satellites, rockets, landing stations, user terminals, you know, all of it. And it’s just, you know, spend another billion dollars this year as we move this project forward, and the time is now. I mean candidly, you know, if we could hit a fast forward button and have this consolation launch right now, our first launch is planned for second half of next year, I wish it were tomorrow, there’s assure everyone in this room is well aware there’s just massive surging demand for high quality, affordable, resilient, secure, low latency, broadband connectivity, and that’s why we’re doing it. We just see a massive market opportunity. Technology is ready. Customers are ready. And, yeah, my colleagues and I just couldn’t be more excited.
Sarah Cruddas – And then the thinking of the technology in terms of, like, there was some delays. Some of those were caused by COVID, and they did impact all of us in the industry as a whole. But how did those small delays beyond your kind of like control actually contribute to enable even better technology to be utilized for Lightspeed? Yeah.
Dan Goldberg – I mean, I’m one of these people that believes that everything works out for the best in life and the way it should. I have my doubts at one point trying to move this project, really, why both just so, just painful. I mean, you know, we have a lot of people who we hired to move this project forward. We have total convictions on it. We had great design at that point. You just want to go but these projects are big and they’re complex and they require billions and billions of dollars of financing.
We were on our way to getting COVID, and as we all know, because we all lived through it when COVID hit, the supply chain started to back up. So schedule went from, you know, left to way the hell out to the right, and then, because of the supply chain shortages, not only was schedule problematic, but there was massive inflation, so the cost of everything just went up a whole lot, and that didn’t feel great when that was going on and we were trying to find a way forward. But to your point, and to my point about just things working out for the best, and thank God for the world class engineering team that we have at Telesat, we found a better path.
We leveraged a more advanced processor for the satellite, which meant that the satellites could be cheaper, but still equally candidly, more capable than the satellites that we had originally baselined, and we saved $2 billion in capex and another billion dollars in fancy pass. That was massive. Now, you know, lost a year and a half you know of schedule, the $3 billion that’s not bad trade.
Sarah Cruddas – You talk about finding a better path. Do you think that’s something which you adapted? You adapted to what happened to COVID, and you used it to your advantage. You’re a self described optimist. By finding that better path and working with the challenges. And we had so many challenges right now, from geopolitical to even communicating what’s going on in the industry. Do you think the industry as a whole? Your message to them is, find a better path to adapt. In order to succeed, we need to adapt and find those better paths.
Dan Goldberg – We, 100% all of us, need to be flexible, opportunistic. Candidly, bold, and I love this industry, and I’ve been in this industry for a very long time. And while this industry has many wonderful attributes, I would say embracing risk and taking bold steps that hasn’t always been our strong suit and and right through the value chain, which is to say, and look, I mean, we come from a culture where you’re launching stuff In space, and you have to get it right. And, you know, a big part of the culture goes all the way back to when the space industry started.
So I’m thinking NASA and the like and, and these are, you know, I mean, they obviously do massively innovative things, but but our industry has definitely had to adapt to a very fast changing, very dynamic, very fluid environment, in every sense of that fluidity, from the technology that’s available today to what our customers are looking for and what their customers are looking for. You mentioned the geopolitical situation, which itself is very dynamic at this point in time and so. So, yes, you know, I reel back a couple of years ago to us navigating our way through the challenges of COVID, and I’m happy we landed where we landed, but it ain’t over, and our company tell us that, and all of us the rest of the industry operating in this environment today, we all need to be, yes, very fleet of foot, very adept and bold and embrace some risk here to get to a good place.
Sarah Cruddas – And you mentioned being bold, and you mentioned embracing risks. And I think you know what questions probably coming next. In terms of Telesat has a 50 year legacy. We have a lot of young upstarts Now, other companies which have less of a legacy and they’ve taken much more risk. Do you think there’s a balancing act for legacy companies such as Telesat, who have all that experience, versus other companies which might take too many risks or be pushing it forward because of the risk? Do you think that’s where your advantage comes in, by taking more calculated risks? And would you say that is a unique selling point about Telesat and legacy companies and where they can succeed against the SpaceX the Amazons. What would you say?
Dan Goldberg – I would say that it’s a balancing act. You know, it’s great to embrace risk, and we’re having to embrace a lot more risk than we were traditionally required to tolerate in developing business cases, but you still need to be true to your culture and true to your DNA, and our DNA, for better or worse, it’s, it’s, it’s different than you know, some of these new entrants. There are good things about that. There’s some bad things about that and, and I think that nobody’s perfect and, and we’ve traveled a pretty, you know, twisty path to get to where we are today. And I have no illusions that, you know, everything’s just going to be smooth sailing from from here on out, so we’re going to have to continue to to navigate but, but I do think there are strengths that come from this more legacy heritage.
We understand satellite engineering. That’s big part of what we all do. We understand the regulatory environment. We’ve been doing business in virtually every country in the world for decades, and I think, I believe we have a good reputation with regulators. We’ve been active in their markets, providing services as a responsible provider. I think that that gives us an edge, and we know the customer community, we’ve been serving these customers and all the different verticals for decades, doesn’t mean we can be complacent, but I do think that there are some advantages that come from that flip side of that some of these newer entrants, you mentioned SpaceX. They have very different cultures than ours, and sometimes, you know, wish we had a little more of that. They’re massively innovative. They move at, you know, breakneck speed, massively impactful. You know, fail fast and adapt and, and so, you know, it’s a balancing act and, and I believe that that path for some of those companies has allowed them to be successful. There are many other companies that have adopted that path, trying to hit a wall we’ve all heard about, and never quite managed to get over the line at this point in time, you know where we are on the twisty path. I feel really good about it’s, you know, it is a joy to be here with a project that’s fully underway, and where my colleagues and I are just very bullish about what we bring into the market at this point of time.
Sarah Cruddas – And how can you, as a CEO of such a long standard company within the industry, how do you feel? I imagine prize, probably one of the words about light screen, and where you’re heading with that. And what is so significant in terms of the technology that you’re using?
Dan Goldberg – Well, start with the technology. We look you know, you don’t spend billions and billions of dollars on a lower orbit satellite constellation and not bring to the market something that’s forward leaning from a technology and a capability perspective, if you’re not leveraging, you know the most advanced technologies you’re you’re going to kill yourself. So, so our constellation is leveraging state of the art technologies. Every satellite has four optical inner satellite links so they can talk to each other in space. It makes for a very resilient, very distributed, very flexible, capable network. Every satellite has electronically steerable antennas so that we can dynamically change the coverage patterns and hot beams in microseconds, which is vital because we’re going to be serving cell towers, planes, ships, all sorts of different users all within the visible coverage area of the satellites, and they need to be hugely flexible and dynamic in terms of how they serve all those different use cases.
And then each one of our satellites is basically a flying computer processor that’s able to route traffic, clean up bits, which makes it more efficient, which allows us to get more capacity. So, so it’s a hugely flexible, advanced technological, technologically, you know, forward leading system, which we need to do in order to be competitive and meet our customers needs. And then the second…
Sarah Cruddas – How Does it make you feel to be leading as a CEO?
Dan Goldberg – I mean, you know, speak for my colleagues and myself a range of emotions. It’s a big undertaking. I mean, it’s exciting for sure, and we’re all pumped up about moving it forward. Bit of a high wire act. I mean, you know, we’re spending lots and lots of money. We are developing quite a few of the technologies ourselves. I mean, this is us kind of moving we ain’t SpaceX in terms of being fully vertically integrated, but all the system engineering, an enormous amount of software development that’s going to power this constellation is being developed by Telesat, which we think is very important in terms of our ability to continue to manage and squeeze out more efficiencies of the network over time.
So, so a mix of excitement, of some trepidation we, you know, wouldn’t be. We need that trepidation. And then I won’t say pride, because, you know, what’s pride go with before the fall or whatever. But no, we’re excited about this. All of us have been working well. I’d say a lot of us have been working in this industry for decades, and being a part of a very ambitious project like this is very exciting and stimulating. But we’re hiring all these new people, and we’re hiring a ton of people right now who don’t come from our sector, who come from the virtual wireless world, they’re software coders, they’re cloud folks, they’re optical experts, and so it’s an exciting time right now.
Sarah Cruddas – And you lead me nicely to my next question. Also, we’ve got loads of questions for you, so we will be getting to them shortly. Got quite a few excellent ones as well. But in terms of you mentioned hiring people from a diverse industry, no longer just space to space agency, we’re seeing a lot of disruptions in technology, particularly deep tech, AI cloud computing. Is this going to be a code at the moment for the space industry? In terms of those who don’t adapt will be left behind, and how do you see yourself continuing to enable the latest technology, once Lightspeed is fully in orbit as a constellation?
Dan Goldberg – That’s a great question. You know, satellites have always been embedded in people’s day to day lives for decades, and we talk a lot about that here. It’s mostly invisible to people, which, you know, drives us a little bit crazy, because I think you know, the policy makers, regulators, you know, the general public isn’t always sufficiently understanding of just how vital and mission critical the services that we provide are, but that’s changing right now as as space is now more blatantly embedded in people’s lives than it’s ever been, like credit Starling, to some extent, for that and and some of the other stuff that SpaceX has done, just in terms of their launch vehicles and their space exploration programs, but certainly Starlink.
But it’s just, it’s it’s ramping in a way now what companies are doing in the direct device, and that every single one of our you know smartphones is going to be embedded with chipsets that allow these devices to talk directly to satellites and and I think you mentioned AI. AI is just kind of an overlay for all of this, and we are totally at the front end and very nascent stage in terms of what AI is going to mean for the world and for our industry, but it is obvious that it is going to be a tailwind for our industry. It’s going to be accretive in terms of bandwidth consumption, in terms of how our networks operate, and their efficiency in terms of how we do our engineering, terms of how we produce the code that we it’s just everything. And so, you know, it’s, it is? It is an exciting time right now to be in this sector. And yeah, it’s…
Sarah Cruddas – Does the rapid increase of AI concern you in terms of being able to keep up, because it’s so changing so far so rapidly. Are there concerns, or are you excited about that?
Dan Goldberg – Concerns? Of course, and, but there are always concerns whenever a new technology is brought to market, and, and there will always be the need for policy makers, the companies at the forefront of developing these technologies, to be mindful and thoughtful and responsible about about how they’re deployed. So I’d say, you know, nothing new there, but for sure, there are reasons for all of us to be vigilant and thoughtful about how these things are brought forward.
Sarah Cruddas – Okay, well, we have just over five minutes left, so we’re going to do if it’s okay with you, Dan, a quick fire round of these questions to try and get as many of your questions in as possible, if that’s okay. So in terms of the first question, this comes from Robert landsfield, do you anticipate offering a terminal that will compete with the Starlink Mini at a sub $1,000 price point?
Dan Goldberg – So we are, and we’re making announcements almost every other day right now, I think we made an announcement even earlier this morning about a flat panel user terminal development. And this is an area where the progress that’s being made is is very rapid, very I mean, it’s transformative for we we would not have moved forward with a Leo constellation if we hadn’t had conviction that the whole ecosystem around building flat panel antennas was going to be taking giant steps forward. And that’s exactly what’s happening now in each of the different verticals that we’re focused on, terrestrial, enterprise, rural broadband, mobile network operators, aero, commercial jets, private jets, maritime, government users, and so and so. And look, it’s always a trade, as we all know, in our space the more satellites you have in orbit, and the lower they are to the earth, the smaller the user terminal can be.
We’re not focused on the consumer market, where there’s an, I’d say, extra premium for having very low cost, you know, small user terminals, but absolutely the Lightspeed constellation is going to be able to support very small, affordable, flat panel antennas. It’ll always be a trade off. The smaller the antenna, the lower your throughput it’s going to be. It’s true with the mini as well. We’re just dealing with physics here. So So yes, we are super Cognizant on it. Ain’t enough. Just to put very advanced satellites in space you need to have on the ground for your customers, and Starlink and soon Piper are going to raise the bar. And this, you need to have affordable, small, capable, flat panel antennas, and we’re going to be there with all that.
Sarah Cruddas – So not right yet for the $1,000 but maybe in the future?
Dan Goldberg – Were it’s all it’s all tied to volumes and the like, but, but, but I can tell you the advancements that are being made in terms of the user terminal technology. It’s, it’s, it’s all moving in the right direction, and it’s all moving in the right direction very, very quickly. And all of us are going to benefit.
Sarah Cruddas – Another question, quick answers, if possible, we can get as many in when do, what is the current schedule for the full constellation?
Dan Goldberg – So first launch, second half next year, right? So, little bit more than year and a half from now, something like that. We’re gonna launch our first batch of satellites. Those will get subject to extra rigorous in orbit testing. And we’ve tested all this, all these satellites on the ground and whatnot, that nothing replicates, you know, real life environment like it in your satellites in space. So so the first batch will go up second half of next year, we’ll put those through their paces, and then we’re going to be launching, you know, at a very fast tempo.
Space X is launching all of the initial Lightspeed satellites. SpaceX is capable of launching at a very fast tempo, with the plan of us having full global commercial service by the end of 2027 now we’ll have lots of satellites up before then, so we’ll be able to be doing lots of work, lots of beta testing, and maybe even start providing some commercial services prior to that. But in terms of full global coverage late 2027.
Sarah Cruddas – So late 2027, not far, not very long.
Dan Goldberg – It’s not far. Again, if we could bring it forward, and you know, we do that in a nanosecond. But this is the schedule right now.
Sarah Cruddas – I’m going to try to squeeze in two very quick questions, and then that might be twenty second answers, if that’s possible. First, one, beyond Lightspeed, what other products or capabilities are you developing do beyond Lightspeed, what other products or capabilities in development?
Dan Goldberg – Lightspeed is a lot, so Lightspeed itself is going to be very kind of multi-dimensional in terms of the services that it can offer. And okay, you said fast Lightspeed, in addition just offering broadband connectivity and all those different verticals on the earth. We can also do space to space communications with our in orbit satellites. We can potentially do some interesting situational awareness kind of services in space. So there are a lot of capabilities with respect to Lightspeed itself, and that’s where our focus is.
Sarah Cruddas – And can I have a Lightspeed answer to this question? Because we have 20 seconds here, as more constellations get launched, what’s your outlook regarding collision avoidance in 10 seconds.
Dan Goldberg – In 10 seconds, it’s a very important issue. It requires all of us to cooperate and share data and be very transparent with each other, and if we do that and take the risk seriously, it’s something that we’ll be able to manage and ensure that the space environment is there for everyone’s use and enjoyment for decades and decades and centuries to come.
Sarah Cruddas – Well, Dan Goldberg, thank you very much. That was 11 seconds, and thank you. Thank you so much.
Dan Goldberg – Okay, thank you all.
