Hermes Datacomms is First to Provide O3b Capacity to Meet Growing Demand of the Oil & Gas Sector in West Africa

 24th June 2015

Hermes Datacomms has partnered with O3b Networks, a global satellite operator offering next generation satellite networks, to deliver communications to a global oil company, with major operations in the world’s most important oil and gas regions. Under the contract, Hermes will deliver critical communications for the company’s operations in West Africa and a connection back to their regional headquarters in Europe.

The use of O3b satellites, which are in a unique orbit closer to the earth  than conventional geostationary satellites, reduces latency, increases data rates and improves voice and video quality for the end user. The high throughput O3b satellites also offer much greater capacity, with the ability to support up to 1.6 Gigabits in a single beam.

“We are delighted to be the first to provide O3b capacity for the oil and gas sector in West Africa. This will provide our customer with the benefits of satellite connections with the latency of fibre connections,” said Barry Bouwmeester, Business Development Manager, Africa, Hermes Datacomms. “Access to the O3b network gives us the ability to open up new services where it would be difficult to obtain access to fibre.”

Hermes Datacomms and SpeedCast have been working closely with O3b Networks
over the last 2 years. The Group now has a number of fully trained O3b installation engineers, who have completed the O3b Networks Installation Training at their factory in Virginia, USA. This announcement follows two other recent announcements by the Group working closely with O3b to deliver service in the Pacific and South East Asia regions.

“Delivering innovative solutions to meet the needs of our energy customers is the cornerstone of our success.  With O3b’s network, we are able to deliver high performance capacity and low latency for a superior end-user experience,” said Keith Johnson, SVP of Energy, SpeedCast. “As a company, we pride ourselves on being technology agnostic, always looking for the best solution to provide exceptional customer service in the key countries where our customers operate. This announcement represents our strategic
partnership with O3b in the energy business.”