From Sint-Niklaas, Belgium -- love writing that dateline! -- Newtec (News - Alert) has announced its FlexACM technology, billed by company officials as a product “which on average doubles satellite link capacity,” was chosen to be the system behind Gateway Communications’ (News - Alert) flagship continent-wide Internet backbone service, Africa IPJetDirect.

Gateway Communications is a pan-African communications network with customers in 40 countries. It launched IPJetDirect last year using C band and Ku band satellites to deliver IP services to mobile phone operators.

 

Newtec’s DVB-S2 VCM and DVB-S2 FlexACM technologies “have been deployed on several platforms across the African continent” to increase bandwidth efficiency and allow Gateway to “make best use of the scarce satellite capacity over Africa,” according to Newtec officials.

 

Last month Newtec announced that Beirut-headquartered IDMI chose Newtec’s FlexACM technology to boost capacity and availability on satellite IP trunking links between Greece and ten customer sites in the Middle East.

Newtec CEO Serge Van Herck said Gateway will use FlexACM to “reach out even further to satisfy Internet demand without unnecessary further satellite capacity investment.”

FlexACM combines technologies for implementing Adaptive Coding and Modulation, traffic shaping, payload compression and IP acceleration in a way for IP trunking and IP backbone satellite links. Company officials claim that in addition to doubling the capacity of an existing link, on average, “it also guarantees 100 percent availability of link reception, even when all other systems are down due to heavy rain fade.”

And last October Newtec announced that InSat GmbH, which has been operating its own hub and related infrastructure in Saarbruecken, Germany, since 2000, selected Newtec’s equipment for a new project in the Middle East and Central Asia:

 

“This includes Newtec’s satellite Elevation modulators and demodulators for IP trunking applications over satellite in full compliance with DVB-S2 standards.”