O3b Networks and SpeedCast International Limited have announced an agreement to provide connectivity over O3b’s satellite network.
The service will be provided to consumers, businesses and government customers by Amalgamated Telecom Holdings (Kiribati) Limited (ATHKL), a subsidiary of Amalgamated Telecom Holdings of Fiji.
The Republic of Kiribati has a population of about 100,000 living on 33 atolls and islands, across 3.5 million square km of ocean. O3b represents an ideal solution, as the dispersed geography makes laying undersea fibre cables unreasonably expensive and time-consuming. Existing geostationary (GEO) satellites do not provide high enough throughput and low enough latency, both of which are necessary for modern e-commerce, e-government, e-education and e-Health applications.
Kiribati is in the final stages of testing the O3b link, and will first deploy the service to Tarawa, the largest island in the country. The multi-year agreement provides flexibility to expand capacity where required, to ensure ATHKL can provide high performance connectivity for HD video, e-commerce, online education, or cloud services.
O3b’s Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites orbit at 8,062km above the Earth and have a latency of less than 150 msec—25% that of the geostationary (GEO) satellite systems connecting Kiribati. The switch to the lower latency, higher throughput O3b service will transform the island nation providing connectivity equivalent to long-haul fibre, while avoiding the exorbitant cost of laying an undersea cable to the island.
“SpeedCast is happy to partner with ATHKL and O3b to quickly and cost-effectively provide the people of Kiribati cutting-edge technology, enabling economic growth and access to all forms of e-commerce, education and health,” said Pierre-Jean Beylier, CEO of SpeedCast.
Imran Malik, VP Asia for O3b Networks, added: "With O3b’s high throughput and low latency connection, with value adds from SpeedCast, Kiribati is stepping into the future.”
