France’s Thales and satellite operator SES have reached a pair of agreements to market a new in-flight connectivity offering for airline passengers, the companies announced Monday. Under the first agreement, Thales will offer by mid-2017 a new flight connectivity product over the Americas called FlytLive, using Ka-band HTS with two currently orbiting satellites. The other contract calls for SES to procure a new satellite—to be manufactured and launched by Thales Alenia Space in 2020 to meet the specific needs of FlytLive. SES will operate the satellite infrastructure for FlytLive, as well as the complementary ground network.

Called SES-17, the satellite will use an architecture based on Thales Alenia Space’s all-electric version of the Spacebus NEO platform. Weighing more than six metric tons at launch and offering payload power in excess of 15 kW, it promises a design life of 15 years. Operating in geostationary orbit in the Ka frequency band, it will thereby complement SES’s portfolio of wide- and spot-beam capacity in different frequency bands (Ku and Ka) and orbits (geostationary, GEO, and medium earth orbit, MEO).

The partners haven’t yet disclosed the orbital position and the intended launch vehicle. The satellite’s design calls for the deployment use of nearly 200 spot beams of various size for more flexible allocation of capacity over high-traffic areas as well as field-of-view beams for the most efficient delivery of Internet, live broadcast television and so-called real-time content.

SES-17 will cover North America, South America, Central America, the Caribbean and the Atlantic Ocean. According to Thales, the network will offer “substantial gains” over today’s broadband connections.

“SES-17 is tailor-made for customers who demand globally flexible, scalable, future-proof and resilient solutions in the aeronautical sector, but also in other demanding data markets,” said SES president and CEO Karim Michel Sabbagh, “The procurement of SES-17 also illustrates our long-standing relationship with Thales Alenia Space, which has built 12 satellites for O3b and is in the midst of building another eight.”