Kacific Goes all-in on AWS to Scale up Delivery of its Broadband Internet to Remote Areas and Improve Lives

20 December 2021

Kacific Broadband Satellites announced that it is going all-in on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to scale up the delivery of its broadband internet for the rural regions of Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Kacific plans to migrate its IT infrastructure and critical business applications to AWS by 2022.

AWS has enabled Kacific to reduce time-to-market and to enhance network management by approximately 50% and respond more rapidly to customer requests and needs. These gains in productivity and quality of service, achieved by leveraging AWS technologies like compute, storage, and databases, in combination with Kacific’s commitment to providing affordable connectivity, have improved healthcare outcomes, educational opportunities, and disaster recovery capabilities for millions of people living in remote areas of Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

By migrating its IT support systems to the world’s leading cloud services provider, Kacific is taking a “cloud-first” approach to provide accessible, high-quality, low-cost broadband internet connectivity enabling it to connect subscribers to its rapidly expanding network.

“Kacific is connecting nations across the Asia Pacific so that people in rural and even the most remote areas have the same access to information and services as the urban population,” said Kacific Chief Executive Officer, Christian Patouraux. “With AWS, we now have added agility to rapidly scale as demand grows.”

“We are delighted to support Kacific in its mission to leverage space technologies to help governments and organizations deliver better access to services for its citizens, especially in remote communities,” said Peter Moore, Regional Managing Director for Public Sector, Asia Pacific and Japan, AWS. “Internet connectivity is fundamental to improving the lives of people globally. By leveraging AWS technologies, Kacific has scaled its services securely to meet customer demand for internet connectivity, bringing the people of our region together.”

Responding to Covid

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of providing citizens with reliable access to the internet, as countries across Southeast Asia and the Pacific entered lockdowns, and the demand and need for critical government information and services, such as healthcare and education, increased.

Kacific responded by rapidly introducing new products and services, such as GigWiFi and Community WiFi to shape and deliver appropriate and affordable bandwidth plans to over 1,000 healthcare facilities and education premises to support communities affected by the pandemic.

Working with the AWS for Aerospace and Satellite team of industry experts and using AWS’s suite of cloud services gives Kacific the ability to quickly innovate new ways to serve customers. By using AWS, Kacific is able to ensure its operations support systems (OSS) and business support systems (BSS) are able to deliver services to customers quickly and securely.

Improving information flows to sales channels

Since the beginning of the global COVID-19 pandemic, Kacific has adapted its business model, engaging a large number of smaller channel partners with a retail franchise model, as it was no longer able to only rely on the highly leveraged model for the typical satellite bandwidth operators. Specifically, Kacific introduced Gigstarter – a pre-packaged, broadband plan offered on a monthly model that is sold plan by plan, site by site via our partners to the end users. This capability enables Kacific’s partners to sell residential and enterprise broadband plans without heavy investments into infrastructure or long-term contracts, and gives them the flexibility and scalability at a lower risk. Gigstarter also utilises a strong distribution channel of local, smaller retailers, to access more isolated communities quickly.

This pioneering retail franchise model required the flexibility and agility for new responsive sales models. By using AWS, Kacific was able to deliver deeper levels of monitoring and reporting, providing these smaller operators with key network information at more detailed and granular levels than before. This, in turn, helped them address end users’ inquiries regarding customer operations and service quality. Becoming self-sufficient in monitoring their own networks ultimately helped to improve results for their end users.