Michèle Beck began her career at Telesat after earning her engineering degree from the University of Ottawa. From designing customer solutions and leading engineering for all product lines to now driving enterprise and government sales, she combines technical expertise with a customer-focused approach—ensuring Telesat delivers the right capabilities at the right time to support growth and mission success.
How did you start out in this industry, and how has it brought you to where you are today?
I joined Telesat right out of engineering school at the University of Ottawa. Initially, I was hired into the engineering group responsible for implementing customer solutions at Telesat’s network of teleports across Canada. Thereafter I transitioned to the broadband development group.
Then, as Director of Engineering, I managed the engineering of all of Telesat’s product lines. I did this for several years, and then moved over to enterprise and government sales, to apply my engineering knowledge and a more structured approach to the development of opportunities and solutions for the commercial team.
The transition from engineering to sales was interesting. I embraced it as “It’s fundamentally about building partnerships with our customers—working closely to meet their current needs while gaining insight into the future direction of their business. Our role is to ensure we deliver the right capabilities and performance at the right time to support their growth and mission.”
How is your organization changing the game within your industry sector?
Telesat has developed a highly innovative Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite network, Telesat Lightspeed, that will be seamlessly integrated with terrestrial networks. This new offering has delivers fibre-like performance anywhere in the world, with unique security features and capabilities that were designed to meet mission-critical connectivity requirements of enterprise and government customers.
What technologies, business models, and trends will drive the biggest changes in your industry over the next two years?
Artificial intelligence (AI), increasing ISR requirements, and reliance on cloud-based, real-time data analysis is driving a surge in data generation and consumption. This is placing greater demands on network bandwidth and accelerating the need for faster, more responsive infrastructure. The need for reliable, low-latency connectivity everywhere will continue to increase.
How has innovation become engrained in your organization’s culture and how is it being optimized?
From day one of Telesat’s existence, we have been innovating to meet connectivity requirements of Canadians. Telesat has achieved several satellite “industry firsts:” Telesat launched the world’s first domestic communications satellite in geostationary orbit, the first Ku-band satellite with the first direct-to-home (DTH) services, the first Ka-band consumer broadband satellite network, and even the first 5G backhaul link over LEO. We are constantly evaluating cutting-edge technologies to develop innovative solutions that address evolving government and enterprise requirements.
What was your most challenging moment?
In 2022 we experienced an anomaly with our Anik F2 geostationary satellite, which was one of our highest utilized satellites in North America. As a result, the satellite had to transition to inclined orbit operations sooner than expected, which required us to quickly identify alternative solutions to keep mission-critical connectivity services online. It was a big challenge, but we successfully transitioned all enterprise and government networks and maintained continuity of services.
What was your A-HA moment or epiphany that you think will resonate most with our reader, tell us that story.
To me, the A-HA moment is the evolution of our capabilities with our proliferated Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation. We are building in capabilities to ensure robustness, resiliency and redundancy, with additional flexibility and cybersecurity features to meet stringent requirements of enterprise and defence customers. This proliferated architecture provides resiliency that is not possible to replicate in geostationary orbits. If a LEO satellite experiences an anomaly, service delivery will not be impacted. Customers will always have multiple satellites in view to guarantee continuity of services.
We are also integrating unique security and data routing capabilities for defence customers to ensure data sovereignty in Canada – as well as any point across the globe where our armed forces are deployed.
Recognizing that our customers will have multiple levels of redundancy for their critical services with Telesat Lightspeed was my A-HA moment.
What are some of the biggest challenges in your industry sector?
First, there’s the fact that space is a difficult environment. Companies invest billions of dollars in building and launching satellites into space. Every component on board must function reliably under extreme conditions—including intense temperatures, radiation, microgravity, and the absence of oxygen—to ensure the satellite’s survival and mission success.
Secondly, our LEO satellites are designed for a 10-year lifespan, which offers stability for customer services and peace of mind that their antenna investments will have a long life as well. But with the pace of innovation, we also must ensure that our technology doesn’t become antiquated. To address this, we’re using software-based solutions so we can incrementally add capabilities and features over the lifetime of each satellite and continually evolve and innovate.
What is your parting piece of advice?
Satellite technology has been available for 60 years but should not be dismissed as “legacy” technology. Much like the progression from 2G to 3G and now 5G in wireless networks, each new generation of satellite technology delivers transformative leaps in performance and capability. They are the only truly ubiquitous connectivity solution, capable of delivering coverage to every point on earth, and they will continue operating when terrestrial networks are compromised, either intentionally or via natural disasters.