By Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in New York

Drones in the skies over Afghanistan, bored sailors wanting access to social networks and navies chasing pirates are all expanding demand for communications satellites, according to Dave McGlade, chief executive of Intelsat, the world’s largest provider of fixed satellite services.

On Thursday, Mr McGlade will outline plans to invest $1.3bn in four satellite launches over the next 18 months, targeting the Asia-Pacific region. This underscores the impact of fast-growing economies’ rising appetite for pay-TV, broadband access, mobile connectivity and maritime communications.

The Luxembourg-based group’s clients range from CCTV, China’s main state broadcaster, to Russia’s central bank, but its biggest growth area has been its government business, which grew 16 per cent in 2010 and 10 per cent in the first quarter of this year.

The Pentagon’s growing use of unmanned aerial vehicles, such as those that relayed images of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound to the White House, has boosted its demand for commercial satellites.

US armed forces’ need for high-resolution images of suspected bomb-making activity in Iraq or poppy crops in Afghanistan, and use of drones for air strikes has sharply increased the use of the pilotless aircraft.

The group has moved two satellites into the Middle East region since 2008, but has almost no capacity left there, prompting it to build a new satellite, Intelsat 27, to meet demand.

Mr McGlade says Intelsat has presold “a great deal” of its new Asian capacity to customers including Tata Communications and Sony Pictures Television.

Mr McGlade said growth had also come from providing services to the US Navy and others pursuing pirates, and from commercial shipping owners seeking satellite broadband services to relieve the tedium of long journeys for crews.

“They want to go on Facebook. When you have ships going through those shipping lanes, it’s often very uneventful,” he said.

Intelsat, bought for $16.4bn in 2008 by a private equity group including BC Partners and Silver Lake, has also struck recent contracts with the Australian Defence Force and with Armed Forces Radio and Television Services, which provides services to US troops.

Mr McGlade, a former executive at O2, cautioned, however, that its government business was being held back by US procurement policies, which dictate that satellite capacity be bought from year to year on the spot market, depriving it of the predictability of long-term contracts.

“When you have a massive [government] budget crunch you have to do things differently,” he said: “We need to find more cost-effective ways we can fix pricing so continuity exists for supporting the soldier in the field.”

Customers including the US Department of Defense “would like to share in the favourable economics our commercial customers have,” he said, but were held back by “Congressmen trying to create jobs in their local districts”. Gridlock in Washington meant that the issue would “get harder before it gets better”, he said.

Mr McGlade, who joined Intelsat in 2005, said the company had seen interest from media and telecoms clients in Latin America, where it has struck deals with HBO and BT.

The group, which competes with SES and Eutelsat, has struggled with new competition in African markets from low-cost satellite and fibre network operators, but Mr McGlade said it was winning blue-chip customers with better support and back-up networks.

Intelsat reported revenues of $2.5bn but a net loss of $506m last year, including $111m in charges for impaired satellites. Its latest launch, Intelsat New Dawn, was delayed until April, and has suffered trouble in deploying an antenna reflector.

It plans seven launches by 2013 and struck a $280m deal with MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates, the Canadian aerospace group, in March to refuel and service its satellites.

“2010 was the toughest year I’ve had in six years, and we still grew, and our backlog went up to $9.8bn,” Mr McGlade said. Intelsat’s owners would look for an exit “over time”, he said, but after it generated $2bn in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation last year, “I think they’ll be patient”.

? The Financial Times Limited 2011