ASI, the Italian Space Agency announced an agreement with
Eutelsat Communications to use the new KA-SAT High Throughput Satellite to
develop broadband connectivity for public administrations in Italy.
The agreement was signed by Enrico Saggese, president of
ASI, and ArduinoPatacchini, CEO of Skylogic, the Eutelsat affiliate that
provides broadband services through KA-SAT.
Eutelsat‘s high-capacity KA-SAT infrastructure is a
powerful new platform for extending broadband access to users beyond range of
terrestrial networks. ASI is planning the progressive use of 550 Mbps of KA-SAT
capacity across 10 spotbeams that together provide full coverage of Italian territory.
The capacity will mainly be deployed to deliver broadband
to Italian public administrations beyond range of terrestrial networks so that
the benefits of ICT can be extended to citizens located in previously
underserved regions.
A public private partnership will be set up by ASI with
the private sector to deploy broadband services for Italian institutional and government entities. These will include
the Tooway service, which is delivered through KA-SAT, and offers users
broadband speeds of up to 10 Mbps downstream and 4 Mbps upstream.
In addition, ASI will cooperate with Skylogic to access KA-SAT
and to define integration schemes between Tooway and the capacity that ASI
foresees to have on its own satellites in the future.
“ASI is looking carefully after the overall Italian
satellite telecommunications strategy, with the objective of deploying
state-of-the-art infrastructure to cover the needs of institutional customers,”
said Enrico Saggese, president, ASI.
We think that exploiting the public-private partnership
in this field will be very beneficial, for both the efficiency and the
effectiveness of the relevant programmes. This agreement with Eutelsat and
Skylogic is fully consistent with our objectives and opens wide cooperation
perspectives, for the benefit of the Italian institutions and citizens,”
Saggese added.
“This agreement with ASI is a new example of how our
powerful and flexible KA-SAT infrastructure can be used to efficiently and
quickly equalise access to the benefits of broadband. We are delighted to build
this new relationship with Italy’s National Space Agency, which is committed to
exploiting the strengths of satellite telecommunications for increasing
knowledge and developing a culture of high technology in Italy,” said
Michel de Rosen, CEO, Eutelsat.
In service since May 2011, Eutelsat’s high-capacity all
Ka-band system, combining satellite and on-ground infrastructure, opens a new
chapter in the market for satellite-based IP services. Its revolutionary
concept is based on a payload with 82 narrow spotbeams connected to 10 ground
stations.
This configuration enables frequencies to be reused 20
times and takes total throughput to beyond 70 Gbps. The ground network uses
ViaSat’sSurfBeam 2 technology, an advanced version of the technology already
powering broadband connectivity for 500,000 satellite homes in North America.
The combination of KA-SAT’s exceptional capacity and
SurfBeam 2 enables Internet connectivity to be delivered at speeds comparable
to ADSL for more than one million homes in Europe and large parts of the
Mediterranean Basin.
By Telecomlead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
