Vodacom Business Services Expands with Hughes Broadband Satellite Solutions

April 18, 2011

Hughes Network Systems, announced that it was selected by Vodacom Group, Ltd., a leading African communications company, to provide its market-leading HN and HX broadband satellite solutions to help propel Vodacom's aggressive expansion of converged service offerings in South Africa and throughout the continent. Most recently, Vodacom purchased the high power HN9200 and HN9400 Ka/Ku-band terminals to both augment their existing services and in anticipation of the arrival of Ka-band satellite service in Africa.  

Vodacom is South Africa's leading cellular service company, providing mobile voice and data communications and related services to almost 40 million customers. In addition, Vodacom Business Services offers a wide range of converged communications solutions over a variety of technology platforms to enterprise, SME, and public sector customers, including managed VPN, broadband data and Internet connectivity, and converged hosting and application based services.

"We are very pleased to offer a comprehensive portfolio of customized, managed VPN, overlay and broadband satellite services utilizing the Hughes HN and HX satellite systems," said Sean Victor, principal specialist, Converged Satellite at Vodacom Business Services. "Since launching Vodacom Business Services in 2008, we have made significant investments in infrastructure in order to offer a wide variety of services including next-generation IP voice, managed networks and infrastructure, Internet access, hosting, and storage services. With the addition of Hughes technology, we are aggressively expanding our service offerings into specific target markets in South Africa and throughout the African continent."  

"Hughes is very excited to be supporting Vodacom Business Services in its rapid expansion of service offerings," said Soheil Mehrabanzad, assistant vice president, Middle East/Africa at Hughes. "Our advanced HN and HX Systems, featuring IPoS/DVB-S2 with the ACM (adaptive coding modulation) feature, deliver highly efficient bandwidth utilization that enables Vodacom to maximize satellite capacity and contain costs as they grow their business."

Hughes has been a leading supplier of broadband systems and solutions to Africa and the Middle East since the early 1990s. Its sales and support teams serve a growing base of customers with satellite-based, broadband IP, multimedia, data, video, and voice solutions.