Satellite Technology Feature Article
June 09, 2010
Canada Rural Broadband Provider Maximizes Capacity Usage with Loral
By Anuradha Shukla, TMCnet Contributor
Loral Space & Communications, Inc., a designer and manufacturer of satellites and satellite systems for commercial and government applications including direct-to-home television, broadband communications, wireless telephony, weather monitoring and air traffic management, announced that Barrett Xplore Inc., a large rural broadband provider in Canada, has chosen to make the best of its capacity usage on the payload of Loral on the ViaSat-1 broadband satellite.
Under the terms of its agreement with Barrett Xplore Inc., Loral Space & Communications (News - Alert), Inc. will be getting lease payments of 262 million Canadian dollars over the life of the ViaSat-1 broadband satellite, for the utilization of its geostationary capacity all throughout Canada.
Loral Space & Communications, Inc., reached a decision to invest in the Canadian payload on ViaSat (News - Alert)-1 broadband satellite. ViaSat-1 is a next-generation, high-throughput broadband satellite acquired in early 2008. It is now under construction at the Space Systems/Loral and is planned to start service in the middle part of 2011.
The company owns 64 percent of Telesat (News - Alert), which offers reliable and secure satellite delivered communications solutions to broadcast, telecom, corporate and government customers on a worldwide basis.
Also, the capacity of Loral Space & Communications, Inc. which offers around 12 Gbps throughput will be used by Barrett Xplore Inc. to provide a strong customer experience for gaining access to future bandwidth rich Internet applications.
John Maduri, CEO at Barrett Xplore Inc., stated that the spot beam design and high capacity Ka-band transporters of ViaSat-1 broadband satellite will help Barrett Xplore Inc. meet their commitment of offering rural Canadians with high-quality broadband service.
In related news, the Office of Post and Telecommunications French Polynesia, or “OPT,” a telecommunications provider in the Pacific Islands, recently launched a new high-speed satellite broadband network based on iDirect’s (News - Alert) Evolution platform.
Anuradha Shukla is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Anuradha’s article, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi
