Satellite networks have been built by the DVB group and dedicated to digital television service. However, in the current service convergence trend, a future satellite network architecture has to be built in a less dedicated way to fit heterogeneous services. This work begins with a description of DVB satellite networks. Then, network convergence solutions are studied for the satellite context. IP and MPLS have then been chosen to build a satellite convergent architecture. Several scenarios are examined so as to evaluate this architecture. A first one deals with the historical television service in a unidirectional, transparent satellite context. We show the feasibility of such a scenario with similar performances and better protocol organisation which simplifies satellite evolution. The next scenarios concern an interactive television service with a return link and a voice over IP service. The ability of deploying new services in a simple manner is thus highlighted. The last scenario applies our convergent approach to the ULISS industrial project of a regenerative hybrid satellite.