Intelsat reimagining cloud access with AWS Direct Connect

Powered by a large fleet of more than 58 satellites in multi-orbit, operating more than 100 teleports and points of presence (PoPs) globally, and using more than 200K miles of fiber network, Intelsat is an international communications service provider servicing the aviation, media, government, land and mobility, internet service providers (ISPs) and telecommunications, and space industries. Intelsat is recognized as the market leader delivering media content from 6,500 TV and radio channels reaching 2 billion viewers globally, accounting for 31 percent of total annual revenue as of the third quarter of 2024.

Business challenge

Intelsat knows that distributing a variety of content across platforms is challenging. As more online video service offerings increase, programmers and distributors have adopted the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud to speed up innovation, reach new audiences with more content, drive cost efficiencies, and manage costs. Taking advantage of the robust suite of AWS services and the availability, elasticity, and efficiency of the AWS Cloud is key, but the critical focus of the programmers is the ability to securely transfer content to and from the cloud while maintaining distribution reliability. By operating in the AWS Cloud and becoming an AWS Service Delivery Partner, Intelsat’s Cloud Connect Media service provides programmers and content producers with a global media network to directly connect users to cloud infrastructure through private gateways.

Satellite and cloud integration

By integrating the Intelsat network with AWS Direct Connect, Cloud Connect Media provides customers with the ability to securely access their cloud services while still being able to use Intelsat’s full suite of managed services such as the ability to uplink and downlink to key satellites and teleports, colocation, and much more. Intelsat offers two types of connections to their customers: dedicated connection and hosted connection. The dedicated connection option is for connecting a single customer, a service capability Intelsat has been offering for three years. The new partnership adds the enhanced offering of a hosted connection, which is a connection provisioned by Intelsat and shared among many customers.

Both connection types incorporate AWS Direct Connect to provide a fully managed private connectivity from end to end between customer facilities and AWS. Compared to an internet-based connection alternative, this private network connection provides a better network experience, a strengthened security posture, and consistent bandwidth—all with reduced cost. By creating a connection from an extensive list of Direct Connect locations worldwide, customers can reach an AWS Region from their on-premises network. Customers can access AWS services such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) through the customer’s Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) endpoint.

Whether a customer connects to the Intelsat 2.0 MPLS fiber core network from their data center or through a satellite connection, they can use Direct Connect to access their AWS workloads from any Intelsat service offering. To broaden connectivity options, Intelsat is expanding connectivity to both US coasts with redundant Direct Connect connections in both McLean, Virginia, and Palo Alto, California. With this architecture, Intelsat will be able to meet customer security and resiliency needs.

When a customer connects to the IntelsatOne network, Intelsat provides standard media services over a hosted virtual private network (VPN) using Layer 2 virtual private network (L2VPN) protocol. This VPN provides a point-to-point private connection for content delivery from the customer’s satellite downlink location to the designated customer VPC within the AWS Region.

To maintain high resiliency, the service consists of four L2VPN tunnels, two using Intelsat “Red” paths and two using Intelsat “Blue” paths. Each path color in this network is dual and diverse of each other, providing redundant delivery of media to the endpoint. All paths originate at an Intelsat teleport where customers will deliver two Red copies of the data at one router, and two copies of the Blue data on another router. One Red and one Blue L2VPN are delivered to each AWS Region, US East (N. Virginia) us-east-1 and US West (Oregon) us-west-2. Customers can use Secure Reliable Transport (SRT), an internet protocol for routing over the L2VPNs to connect to their endpoint on AWS. As a managed service offering, Intelsat is responsible for the availability of L2VPN services. The following figure shows the available network paths that customer traffic can be routed through when using the IntelsatOne managed network offering.

Figure 1: L2 VPN Service topology

Success story

C-SPAN—the nonprofit, public affairs network providing Americans with unfiltered access to federal government proceedings—uses this connectivity to deliver fast and reliable pathways from the Galaxy fleet and Intelsat’s media-enabled teleports over the resilient IntelsatOne media network to AWS, where C-SPAN hosts a number of cloud applications and services. This collaboration provides over 20 million regular C-SPAN viewers a more efficient way to connect to their playout, video editing, and additional resources they use in the cloud while still accessing the IntelsatOne media network for centralized distribution and managed services, including uplink and downlink to key satellites and teleports, colocation, and much more. This reach is expected to grow as more media customers look for video distribution options from their AWS Cloud instance.

In addition to their domestic Direct Connect footprint, Intelsat is planning to add more IntelsatOne interconnects in other AWS Regions to deliver high quality media content to its global audience. The partnership between Intelsat and AWS will continue to grow as they launch their software-defined satellites, expected to be in service by 2025, to build a unified 5G global network ecosystem with maximized resiliency, reliability, and reach.

The cloud journey continues

Intelsat’s AWS Direct Connect hosted service expands their existing AWS Cloud portfolio, enabling more customers to access secure, high-performance cloud connectivity. The partnership directly benefits media companies through reduced network latency, enhanced security, lower connectivity costs, and simplified cloud resource access. Looking ahead, Intelsat and AWS will continue developing solutions for content delivery and distribution across global markets.

Contributing authors: Anannya Sarkar, Keith Martin, Mandy Cassells