Hispasat

Hispasat, headquartered in Madrid and founded in 1989, is Spain's national satellite operator and a major European GEO telecommunications satellite fleet operator — providing television broadcasting, broadband internet, corporate networks, and government communications services across the Iberian Peninsula, Latin America, the United States, and North Africa through a fleet of geostationary satellites at orbital positions that provide optimal footprints for its key markets.

Historically a state-controlled company with Spanish government and Eutelsat as primary shareholders, Hispasat operates a fleet of GEO satellites including the Hispasat 1E (positioned at 30°W, serving Spain, Portugal, and the Americas), Hispasat 1F (also 30°W), Amazonas series (61°W, serving Latin America), and later-generation high-throughput satellites serving broadband markets.

The 30°W orbital slot is particularly valuable because it sits in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, providing strong coverage of both Western Europe and the entire Americas on a single satellite — a geographic advantage that has made Hispasat the dominant satellite TV platform for Spanish-language content distributed simultaneously to Spain and Latin American nations.

Hispasat's broadcasting business serves Spanish and Portuguese public broadcasters (RTVE, RTP) and pay-TV platforms across Latin America, with transponder capacity leased to content aggregators who distribute hundreds of TV and radio channels to cable systems, DTH (direct-to-home satellite dish) subscribers, and IPTV platforms across 20+ countries. The government services segment provides secure satellite communications to Spain's Ministry of Defense, National Intelligence Centre (CNI), and other government entities requiring sovereign communications infrastructure.

In 2022, Red Eléctrica Corporation (now Redeia) took a majority ownership stake in Hispasat from Eutelsat, restoring dominant Spanish state-adjacent control. Hispasat competes with SES, Intelsat, and Eutelsat for Latin American satellite capacity, and participates in the next-generation broadband satellite capacity market alongside Viasat and Hughes Network Systems.