A short history of ESA's Orbital Test Satellite (OTS). Launched in 1978, OTS was Europe's first multinational telecommunications satellite. At the time of this film's production, OTS had been in orbit for 10 years.OTS has provided the basis to demonstrate the capabilities of satellite technology for telecommunications. Several ground stations have been built in those years to support the groud infrastructure. In particular, Redu in Belgium and Telespazio's Fucino station in Italy are key elements of the ground segment.The role of organisations such as Eutelsat and Inmarsat is also explained in the video Subsequent telecommunications satellites, like Olympus, and systems are also outlined in the video.