SES opens new broadband platforms for five African countries

Global satellite operator SES has launched a flexible and customised high-speed broadband service, with 99.5% availability, for five African countries.

SES Broadband offered up to 1 Gb/s services, with customisable data rates and fixed packages, for consumers in South Africa, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria.

“In anticipation of customer demand for faster broadband connectivity in the next few years, SES will continue to invest in platform innovation to adopt new and more efficient technologies that can work seamlessly with next-generation high-throughput satellite architecture,” SES VP for data portfolio management Krasimira Bozhinkova said.

Further, SES and Intersat signed a multiyear contract to expand Intersat’s Internet service offerings to East Africa, using the Ku-band capacity on SES’s NSS-12 satellite.

The company planned to provide 70 Mb/s shared and dedicated Internet services through the iDirect VSAT technology.

“The new deal on NSS-12 satellite’s Ku-band will allow us to double the number of terminals we serve by 2016,” said Intersat chief technical officer Subrata Roy.

Meanwhile, SES subsidiary SES Techcom Services planned to expand its Astra Connect broadband service for enterprise and oil and gas markets in Africa, leveraging the Newtec Dialog multiservice platform on SES’s Astra 2G satellite.

The new platform, which would be launched in the first quarter of 2016 on the West Africa Ku-band beam of the satellite, was expected to broaden SES Techcom Services’ current portfolio and enable the support of a variety of services.

“By using Newtec’s new platform, our broadband offerings are efficient and scalable and can be offered cost-effectively to our customers,” explained SES Techcom Services MD Gerhard Bethscheider.