Bulletin · 2026.06 · Founding phase · Operator: Indigenous Space Ventures Ltd.

The Internet exchange layer for optical satellites.

Space Internet Exchange is a neutral interconnection fabric for optical ground stations, Earth observation constellations, GEO relay networks, and cloud on-ramps. Operated by an Indigenous-majority-owned Canadian company built around data sovereignty by design.

Operator
Indigenous Space
Ventures Ltd.
Jurisdiction
Canada · sovereign
data residency
First Node
Medicine Hat, AB
50.04° N · 110.68° W
Status
Site & partnership
development
Who is behind this exchange
Space Internet Exchange is operated by Indigenous Space Ventures Ltd., an Indigenous-majority-owned Canadian company. Neutrality of an interconnection fabric is a governance question first and a technical one second. Indigenous co-ownership and OCAP®-aligned data governance make that neutrality structural rather than contractual.
01 — The case

Optical links need more than ground stations.

They need switching, routing, scheduling, weather diversity, commercial clearing, and trusted access to the best sky on Earth. The winning network will not be one station. It will be a fabric.

Problem

Weather breaks single-site networks.

Clouds and smoke turn optical ground access into a probabilistic service. Operators need coordinated access to multiple clear-sky regions, not isolated terminals.

Need

Operators want capacity, not complexity.

Earth observation and relay operators should be able to buy optical access through one commercial and technical interface, with one credential, one schedule, one bill.

Answer

A neutral exchange layer.

Space Internet Exchange connects sites, satellites, clouds, and relay networks through shared APIs, routing policies, identity, and settlement — operated by a party with no satellite business of its own.

02 — Architecture

The switching fabric.

The exchange sits between satellite operators and physical infrastructure. It abstracts weather, geography, terminal ownership, and backhaul into a programmable service layer.

One control plane. Many sites and operators.

A neutral coordination layer that scheduling, identity, settlement, and routing all flow through. Operators integrate once. Site owners and terminal vendors integrate once. Everything else is policy.

Each participating site keeps operational autonomy. The exchange does not own optical terminals or compete with the site owners and operators it interconnects.

01Reservation and scheduling API for optical windows
02Weather-aware and atmospheric path selection
03Terminal-agnostic orchestration across vendors
04Terrestrial routing to fibre and cloud on-ramps
05Usage metering, identity, settlement, audit
Fig. 01Three-layer model
Demand · Operators
EO constellations GEO optical relay LEO data networks Defence & civil missions Cloud platforms
↓ scheduling · identity · routing ↓
Exchange · Coordination
Scheduling API Weather-aware paths Terminal orchestration Settlement & audit
↓ terminal · backhaul · handoff ↓
Supply · Infrastructure
Optical ground stations GEO relay gateways Fibre meet-me rooms Regional data centres Cloud on-ramps
03 — First node

Medicine Hat, Alberta.

The first demonstration site is being scoped on the Canadian prairie — one of the highest-sunshine, lowest-humidity regions in North America. A sovereign Canadian optical node, with Treaty 7 Nation partnership being developed alongside the technical build.

Founding site · in development

A sovereign Canadian optical demonstration node.

Treaty 7 territory · Southeast Alberta

Medicine Hat combines high sunshine hours, dry continental air, flat terrain, established trans-Canada fibre, and an unusually receptive municipal infrastructure posture. It is one of the strongest optical-grade sky regions in the country.

The site is being developed in conjunction with a Canadian space industry technical partner and in early-stage conversation with Treaty 7 Nations on the question of community participation, hosting, and governance — addressed at the start of the project, not as a retrofit.

Coordinates
50.04° N110.68° W
Annual sunshine
~2,500 hramong highest in Canada
Fibre
Trans-Canadamulti-carrier corridor
Power
Municipalgrid + on-site capacity
Territory
Treaty 7partnership in development
Sovereignty
Canadiandata residency in jurisdiction
Expansion candidates — roadmap, not present
Selected for sky quality, sovereign diversity, or both
Atacama
Premier Southern Hemisphere dry-sky region. Astronomy-grade atmospheric record.
CHILE · 24° S
Western Australia
Indo-Pacific longitudinal diversity. Clear-sky inland geography.
AUSTRALIA · 32° S
Canary Islands
Atlantic bridge node with existing observatory-grade sky infrastructure.
SPAIN · 28° N
Namibia
Dry southern African atmosphere. Atlantic / Africa optical anchor.
NAMIBIA · 23° S
04 — Standards & trust

Built on standards. Operated on trust.

An interconnection fabric is only as useful as the protocols and credentials it speaks. And it is only as neutral as its governance. Both are addressed deliberately, not assumed.

Interoperability posture

The exchange is designed to align with established and emerging space-communications standards, with optical terminal interoperability as a first-class concern.

CCSDS Optical Comms SDA OCT / OISL profiles SLE / SLEP OGC API · Coverages STAC S3-compatible egress
Identity & access

Federated identity for all participants — operators, site owners, terminal vendors, customers. Fine-grained authorization at the resource level rather than per-site account sprawl.

OIDC federation Per-mission policy OPA / Rego authorization mTLS service identity
Settlement & metering

Usage metering, service-level enforcement, and commercial settlement are part of the exchange layer, not bolted on. Reservations and consumption are signed, reconciled, and disputable through a neutral arbitration process.

Signed reservations Independent meter records SLA arbitration Per-mission billing
Sovereignty & audit

Data residency is configurable per mission and per jurisdiction. Every reservation, handoff, and routing decision is captured in an append-only audit log that participants and regulators can inspect.

Canadian data residency OCAP®-aligned governance Append-only audit Customer-managed keys
06 — The operator

Why an Indigenous-owned exchange.

A neutral interconnection fabric is a public-interest piece of infrastructure dressed in commercial clothing. The question of who holds it, and who can never quietly tilt it, matters as much as the technology.

“Most ‘neutral’ infrastructure is neutral until it isn’t. We are putting the answer to that question into the cap table, not the marketing copy.”
— Indigenous Space Ventures Ltd.

Space Internet Exchange is operated by Indigenous Space Ventures Ltd., a Canadian company under Indigenous majority ownership. The operator does not run a satellite constellation, sell its own optical terminals, or compete with the customers of the fabric.

The governance posture is OCAP®-aligned: customer and partner data is held under the control of the parties to whom it belongs. Canadian data residency is a baseline, not an optional configuration. Audit logs are inspectable by participants and applicable regulators.

The same operator brings working experience in Indigenous data sovereignty, federated platform architecture, and federally-aligned infrastructure delivery — the design patterns that underwrite the trust layer of the exchange.

OwnershipIndigenous-majority Canadian company
GovernanceOCAP®-aligned data sovereignty
PositionOperates the exchange, does not operate satellites
ResidencyCanadian by default, configurable by mission

Build the neutral layer before everyone builds silos.

The optical space economy is moving from experiments to infrastructure. The window to do this as a fabric — rather than a thicket of single-operator ground networks — is open now and not for long.