Q-KON broadcasts high-speed satellite broadband with StarLight

Q-KON demonstrates the advantages of satellite as the ideal medium to broadcast two-way high-speed Internet services to any location throughout Sub-Sahara Africa. The StarLight service now offers up to 16Mbps download, making it one of the fastest satellite broadband services available to the Africa market.

Starlight is a Q-KON-developed service that integrates the power of the SkyeVine satellite access platform with an advanced billing and provisioning platform.  Operating on the Intelsat IS28 satellite and using Newtec Sat3Play technology, the SkyeVine service is the first high-speed satellite access platform in Africa that is truly available anywhere, anytime and which now sets the standard for access data rates at 16Mbps.

Q-KON has developed the StarLight platform in order to meet the specific demands and requirements of Q-KON’s service partners in each specific country. The StarLight service can be implemented to enable billing in different currencies and at different service profiles as is necessary to be competitive and successfully meet requirements in each region. 

With service partners now in Angola, Botswana and Zambia, the community of StarLight service providers is rapidly expanding. Driven by the success of exactly meeting the needs of the market, StarLight Service Providers can expand their market reach and broaden their business potential.

StarLight adds immediate value to key market sectors across sub-Sahara Africa including mining, utilities & construction; banking & finance; hospitality industries; government & military; residential broadband services; student centres as well as aid & humanitarian organisations.

StarLight offers a number of advantages to business in general, addressing infrastructure development requirements within operators. From a commercial point of view, it guarantees ubiquitous signal coverage over the entire sub-Sahara region, it facilitates different payment options and is designed for flexible definition in Mbps access speed and Gbyte usage.

For ventures that want to take up the service and roll it out to clients, there is a ‘time-of-day’ billing option and the service can be extended to address Wi-Fi HOTspots. A multi-level business channel ecosystem has also been established inclusive of service providers, resellers and end-users for channel-wide distribution, service and support.

User access profiles are clearly defined and easy to appreciate with no daily limits; all service profiles are prioritised for voice services and two calls per terminal can be supported. There are one million terminals suited for installation by accredited installers.

Dawie de Wet, CEO of Q-KON, points out that the IP platform has embedded TCP acceleration, DNS caching and web page pre-fetching, which gives it the capability to overcome the inherent deficiencies of TCP/IP over satellite networks.

“StarLight provides an affordable and reliable broadband IP access service to enable a wide range of professional and business applications. Broadband connectivity is critical to development in Africa, particularly high-growth regions in sub-Sahara, and we are positioned to add value through continuous support and quality service,” he says.