There was a funding gap with the increased program cost, and we had been looking to close that funding gap over the last year or so. We lost almost a year during that process. We had to re-scope the program to fit into the spending envelope that we had. They had to go back out to their supply chain to re-price everything. Thales informed us just around two years ago that they could no longer meet the schedule and price that they had initially proposed due to supply chain issues and inflation. We looked at the technology back then and rejected it and moved forward on the analog DRA and the Thales Alenia Space manufacturing path. It was still capable, still got done what we needed to do, but it required two pairs of DRAs for each satellite to accomplish the coverage and capacity allocation objectives that we have. So, we selected MDA’s analog beam-forming antenna.
We didn’t believe the chipsets we needed were ready and the thermal budget for the overall satellite design wasn’t closing. We try to be forward leaning in terms of technology, but not so risk embracing that we are going into no-man’s land in terms of schedule, price, or performance. It was kind of the holy grail, but it wasn’t ready for prime time. At that time, our engineers felt that the technology wasn’t ready. When we first designed the constellation, we had considered MDA’s digital beam-forming antenna concept. MDA was going to be building the direct radiating antennas - the DRAs - and MDA has a great history doing that as well. MDA was also involved in the contract, but Thales was the prime contractor. We have a very high regard for their capabilities, Thales has a great track record for building constellations. In early 2021 we announced that we selected Thales Alenia Space as the prime manufacturer. Goldberg: We have to go back a little bit here. VIA SATELLITE : Thales first won the contract, yet you switched to MDA. I never doubted that we would get it done. This will be another example for me of that. I am one of those people that believes that everything works out as it should. I genuinely believe we have ended up in a better place. That knocked us back a little bit and we lost two years because of that wrench thrown into our plans. Obviously, we didn’t anticipate COVID coming. For me, it was always a question of when. We have always had strong support from the Canadian federal and provincial governments and our board was always strongly supportive of the opportunity. We had real conviction around the design, total conviction in the business opportunity, which is massive and fast-growing demand for high-throughput, secure, low-latency broadband connectivity in the enterprise market, which is a market that we know quite well. We had a really good design focused on the enterprise broadband market.
In truth, I have always had personal conviction that we would figure it out. Did you have any doubts that you would get to this point? VIA SATELLITE : Telesat made a major announcement with updates on Telesat Lightspeed that related to funding, partners, and timeline.
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