Thaicom is the name of a series of communications satellite

Communications satellite

A communications satellite is an artificial satellite stationed in space for the purpose of telecommunications...

s operated out of Thailand

Thailand

Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

 and the name of Thaicom Public Company Limited, which is the company that owns and operates the THAICOM satellite fleet and other telecommunication businesses in Thailand and throughout the Asia-Pacific.

Thailand-based Shinawatra Computer and Communications

Shin Corporation

Shin Corporation is one of the largest conglomerates in Thailand.- History :It was founded in 1983 as Shinawatra Computer by Thaksin Shinawatra, former Prime Minister of Thailand, and took on its current name in 1999, by using the first four letters of his last name...

 Co. Ltd. (now Shin Corporation) signed a US$ 100 million contract with Hughes

Hughes Aircraft

Hughes Aircraft Company was a major American aerospace and defense contractor founded in 1932 by Howard Hughes in Culver City, California as a division of Hughes Tool Company...

 Space and Communications Company Ltd. in 1991 to launch Thailand's first satellite communications project. The first Thaicom satellite was launched on December 17, 1993. This satellite carried 12 C-band transponders coveting a region from Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 to Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

. Thaksin Shinawatra sold Shin Corporation, which owns 41% of Thaicom Public Company Limited.

Launch Dates

• Thaicom 1 : December 17, 1993
• Thaicom 2 : October 1994; deorbited on October 28, 2010 according to Thaicom CEO
• Thaicom 3 : April 16, 1997; deorbited on October 2, 2006
• Thaicom 4 (IPSTAR-1) : August 11, 2005
• Thaicom 5
  Thaicom 5
  Thaicom 5 is a Thai geostationary communications satellite which is operated by Thaicom, and previously Shin Satellite. It is used to provide communications services to Asia, Africa, Europe and Australia....
  
   : May 27, 2006

Thaicom 3

It was launched in 1997, and became a key for the company in providing international communications services from central Europe and Africa to eastern Asia and Australia. It had 25 C-band transformers out of which 18 connect to Asian regional beam that covered India, southern China, and Southeast Asia. Thaicom 3's fourteen transponders are divided between Thailand and India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. Thaicom 3 is now deorbited.