GovSat is a public-private partnership between the Luxembourg government and satellite operator SES, providing satellite capabilities to allied countries and organisations as well as selling capacity commercially.

“By combining OQ Technology’s 5G products and services with GovSat’s end-to-end satcom solutions […] the companies aim to offer highly scalable applications for air, land and maritime missions across the world,” both partners said in a statement.

OQ Technologies in July put its first commercial 5G internet of things satellite into orbit. The aim is to create a constellation of 60 shoebox-sized satellites to provide pole-to-pole 5G coverage dedicated to machine to machine (M2M) and internet of things communication.

“To successfully provide 5G IoT and machine communication to critical satcom applications in the defence and the government sector, it became evident that we had to partner with a specialized GEO operator,” said OQ Technology CEO Omar Qaise.

“GovSat, due to its application know-how and experience of delivering secure, non-preemptible, reliable and accessible satellite communication services, is the perfect partner to achieve this,” he said.

Under the agreement, OQ Technology will provide user terminals, satellite hub equipment and remote management capabilities. The company will also re-design its satellite IoT user terminal to fit the GovSat frequency band, and it’ll upgrade the antenna of its user terminal.

In return, GovSat will give OQ Technology access to its satellite capacity, operate the satellite hub infrastructure and provide uplink services. 

Since its July launch, OQ Technologies has offered 5G IoT services for applications in environmental monitoring and agriculture, logistics, the maritime sector, smart metering, mining, and oil and gas.