Thaicom Brand Guidelines: Shinawatra Satellite, IPSTAR and Gulf Space Technology

A 30-year concession and a royal name.

Thaicom began as Shinawatra Satellite Co., Ltd., set up on 7 November 1991, according to Thai Wikipedia. It was formed to run a satellite concession granted by the Communications Authority of Thailand, then under the Ministry of Transport, for 30 years from 11 September 1991. The deal was a build-transfer-operate arrangement: the company paid for and ran the satellites, while ownership passed to the state. Thai Wikipedia describes it as the first company in Thailand to go into the satellite business, and it was part of the group that later became Intouch Holdings.

The name came from the palace. Thai Wikipedia says King Bhumibol Adulyadej granted the name Thaicom in December 1991, formed from “Thai Communications” in English and its Thai equivalent; English Wikipedia also says the satellite project was named by the king. The name was given to the satellites first and only later to the company.

English Wikipedia says the company signed a contract with Hughes Space and Communications in 1991 to build Thailand’s first communications satellite. Thaicom 1 was launched on 18 December 1993 on an Ariane 4 from Kourou in French Guiana, carrying 12 C-band transponders over an area from Japan to Singapore. The company had become a public company in August 1993, and on 18 January 1994 its shares began trading on the Stock Exchange of Thailand under the symbol SATTEL. Thaicom 2 followed in 1994, also built by Hughes, and Thaicom 3, built by Aérospatiale, in 1997.

IPSTAR, Shin Satellite and the Thaicom name.

On 2 August 1999 the company changed its name to Shin Satellite, Thai Wikipedia says. Its most ambitious satellite of that period was Thaicom 4, launched under the name IPSTAR on 11 August 2005 on an Ariane 5. English Wikipedia lists it as built by Space Systems/Loral and placed at 119.5 degrees East, the slot later chosen for Thaicom-9 and Thaicom 10. Thaicom 5, built by Alcatel Alenia Space, followed in May 2006 to replace Thaicom 3; Thai Wikipedia says it was retired in February 2020 after a battery problem.

On 10 April 2008 Shin Satellite took the name of its satellites and became Thaicom Public Company Limited, changing its stock symbol to THCOM. The fleet grew again in the 2010s. Thaicom 6, built by Orbital Sciences, went up on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral on 6 January 2014, and Thaicom 7, also known as AsiaSat 6, followed on 7 September 2014 for the 120 degrees East position. Thaicom 8, built by Orbital ATK, was launched on 27 May 2016 (28 May in Thailand) to the 78.5 degrees East slot shared with Thaicom 5 and 6; Thai Wikipedia describes it as a Ku-band satellite used for direct-to-home and high-definition television over Thailand, South Asia and Africa.

Around the satellites the company built a ground business. English Wikipedia places its satellite control centre in Nonthaburi, north of Bangkok, and a teleport and direct-to-home centre in Lat Lum Kaeo, Pathum Thani, and says its services extended to internet, telephone and satellite television. Its subsidiary DTV Services, set up in 2000, is credited by Thai Wikipedia with an internet television service called iPTV.

Design and documentation.

Satellite operators sell something nobody can see. The product is capacity on a spacecraft tens of thousands of kilometres away, so the pictures have to stand in for it, and over six decades the industry has settled on a small, recognisable set of images.

The first is the satellite itself, usually a render rather than a photograph: a box wrapped in gold-coloured foil, solar panels spread wide, hanging against the black of space with the blue curve of the Earth below. The second is the ground. Dishes at a teleport, often shot at dusk with the sky turning orange behind them, show that the network has a physical home, and control rooms full of screens show the people who run it.

The third is the map. Coverage maps, beam footprints and orbital diagrams turn an abstract service into something a buyer can point at, and many operators use them as decoration as much as information, with glowing arcs and honeycomb spot beams laid over a darkened globe. Launch-day photographs supply the drama: a rocket on the pad, then a column of flame, then a mission patch.

Finally there are the users. Because so much of the business now serves people on the move, operators show cruise ships and cargo vessels at sea, airliners above the clouds and passengers with laptops in the cabin, alongside soldiers, broadcasters and remote villages. The same visual vocabulary fills the stands at trade shows such as SATELLITE in Washington, DC, and CABSAT in Dubai, where operators compete for attention with models of their spacecraft, wall-sized coverage maps and screens of live footage. Within that shared language, colour, type and naming do most of the work of telling one operator from another.

A concession ends, a new owner, a new name.

The concession ended on 11 September 2021. Thai Wikipedia says Thaicom 4 and Thaicom 6 were handed back to the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society, which passed their management to the state-owned National Telecom (NT). The company stayed involved: in November 2026 it told the stock exchange that it helps NT run both satellites under an engineering agreement, and that NT would end Thaicom 4’s service on 8 November 2026 and begin de-orbiting it from 9 November, with affected customers moved to capacity on other satellites, Kaohoon International reported on 6 November 2026.

New satellites were ordered through a subsidiary, Space Tech Innovation (STI). In March 2024 the company picked Astranis to supply Thaicom-9, a small Ka-band “MicroGEO” satellite for 119.5 degrees East, with launch planned for 2025, Advanced Television reported. In October 2024 it won the 50.5 degrees East slot at an auction by Thailand’s broadcasting and telecoms regulator and used an older Eutelsat satellite there for the time being; the same report said Thaicom 10, built by Airbus, would be shared 50/50 with Eutelsat at 119.5 degrees East. In September 2025 STI signed export-credit financing for Thaicom 10, with a Falcon 9 launch planned for 2027, Advanced Television reported.

Ownership changed in the same years. Kaohoon International reported that Gulf, then called Gulf Energy Development, took control of Thaicom from Intouch Holdings in late 2022, lifting its stake to 41.14% through a tender offer, and that Gulf and Intouch then merged into one listed company, Gulf Development. On 6 August 2026 Thaicom’s board approved a new name; shareholders approved it on 15 September and it was registered on 17 September 2026, making the company Gulf Space Technology Public Company Limited. Its shares have traded as GST since 28 September 2026, Advanced Television reported, and the old Thaicom emblem was replaced by a double-ellipse seal with the new name at its centre, Kaohoon International reported. The company says the name reflects a move from a communications satellite operator to a space technology company. The thaicom.net address now forwards to a Gulf Space Technology page, while the satellites keep the Thaicom name.

For a design guide, Thaicom shows how a satellite name can outlast the company that carried it, passing from Shinawatra Satellite to Shin Satellite, Thaicom and Gulf Space Technology. Compare Eutelsat, its partner on Thaicom 10, and MEASAT, another Southeast Asian operator. For this guide we use a deep navy, white and a monsoon teal with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Thaicom’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.