Golis Telecom Signs Contract with O3b Networks to Deliver High Speed Connectivity

 

March 9, 2015  

O3b Networks announced that Golis Telecom has signed a multi-year agreement to use O3b’s satellite constellation to bring reliable, high-speed connectivity to its customers in the Puntland region of Somalia. Golis will deploy O3b’s trunking solution, O3bTrunk, as well as O3b’s mobile backhaul product, O3bCell.

 

Golis was founded in 2002 and is the largest telecommunications operator in the Puntland region of Somalia, with extensive network infrastructure. Golis Telecom has telecom centers in ALL the main cities and towns of Puntland. It provides all Telecom services including Voice and Data in both 2G(GPRS) and 3G. It is also an ISP provider in Fixed and Wireless.  Golis also provides electric power in Bosasso where the company is headquartered.

The deployment of O3b’s connectivity by Golis is part of a broader roll out that will cover most of the big towns in Puntland by Satellite using the new O3b satellite services. O3b Networks will land 700km wide satellite beam in North Eastern Regions of Somalia to provide Golis with unprecedented, reliable connectivity across these Regions.

The O3b satellite constellation’s Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) brings unique benefits over conventional geostationary (GEO) satellites. O3b’s satellites provide greatly reduced latency, increased data rates and improved voice and video quality for the user.  Low latency is a primary benefit, directly enabling many cloud-based and other applications that are impossible with the longer latencies of GEO satellite solutions.

Abdiaziz G. Kaarshe, Chairman of Golis said: “O3b is extremely important for our subscribers and the people of Puntland. Traditional satellite is very expensive with high latency and terrestrial connectivity is challenging to reach all the major cities and towns of Somalia—we had to find an alternative that could both be deployed quickly and deliver fiber-like connectivity. O3b really is ‘fiber in the sky,’ and provides exactly what our subscribers need.”

Omar Trujillo, O3b VP for LATAM and Africa said: “We are extremely excited to be working with Golis in Puntland, and assisting them to bring high-speed connectivity to their customers. It is a major challenge to operate and grow a network with traditional geostationary satellite and microwave over long distances, but this is precisely the problem O3b was designed to solve. We will immediately deliver fiber-like capacity and speeds to Golis.”