Following the inauguration of its Middle East and Africa regional office in Dubai, Astrolink has announced it will unveil its broadband offering strategy, at the upcoming 3rd annual Arab International Telecom and IT Conference in Beirut.
Astrolink is building a global constellation of Ka-band satellites to deliver ultra-high-speed Internet access to businesses on a worldwide basis. The first satellite of the system is scheduled to be launched and Astrolink will be operational in 2003. Astrolink will provide two-way access ‘to-the-desktop' at speeds of up to 226 Mbits/s (compared to today's ISDN access speeds of 128 kbp/s).
Astrolink vice president and general manager for the Middle East and Africa, Scott Sobhani said “Because we will operate via satellites, we believe the need for local entities to invest in terrestrial telecommunications infrastructure will be reduced. The differences in access speeds across the world will become a thing of the past, all users will benefit from the same state of the art technology.”
As the Middle East regional Internet continues to mature, the need for more bandwidth will increase at exponential levels. According to a company release, Astrolink is to use up to nine geo-stationary Ka-band satellites in five orbital positions to deliver high-speed global communications.
Astrolink expects “the speed of our system to open the door to new Internet-based opportunities: Virtual private networks, multimedia based entertainment and education, bandwidth intensive digital photos and videos by e-mail, distance learning, etc,” stated Sobhani.
Astrolink is owned by Liberty Media, Lockheed Martin Global Telecommunications, Telespazio and TRW. Based in Bethesda, Maryland, Astrolink will focus on the high-growth area of broadband data services, carrying traffic for Internet, intranet, multimedia, and corporate data networks. Customers will install small satellite dishes at businesses, to connect quickly and inexpensively to high-speed networks. The service will be complementary and compatible with other broadband services like fiber optic transmission and fixed wireless technologies. — (Albawaba-MEBG)
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