Commercialised by the Eutelsat Americas affiliate, EUTELSAT 117 West B is equipped with 48 Ku-band transponders (36MHz equivalent) connected to four beams designed to provide premium coverage of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, the Andean region and the Southern Cone. With its predecessor, the new satellite also creates a multi-satellite neighbourhood at 117° West, already used by Millicom’s Tigo Star, Stargroup and Televisa. It will also provide key services to telecom operators and government service providers in Latin America.

Eutelsat adds that 117 West B also features a new-generation WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) payload operated by Raytheon which will go live in 2018. This is designed to receive signals from ground stations that verify signal accuracy and rebroadcast the information to GPS users, including airline cockpits. The WAAS payload is also the first to be hosted on an all-electric satellite and the third hosted payload on a Eutelsat satellite, following the EDRS-A data relay node on EUTELSAT 9B for ESA and Airbus Defence and Space and the S-band payload on EUTELSAT 10A for EchoStar.