Comtech Selected by Intelsat and Two International Banks to Expand Services Across Africa
Comtech EF Data Corp., has been chosen to expand services for two leading international banking organizations throughout the African continent via Intelsat’s wide beam and innovative Intelsat EpicNG C-Band spot beam services. The platform will be leveraged by two different banks to address the increasing transaction volumes of corporate banking and mining customers, and will upgrade and complement existing Comtech EF Data solutions. Satellite hardware for this platform has been shipped and the network platform will begin operating on Intelsat 903 wide beam capacity with a seamless transition planned onto Intelsat 35e.
The Comtech Heights platform, supporting both star and mesh connectivity, was chosen as the best fit solution for both projects due to its ability to leverage the significant performance advantages offered by the unique high throughput Intelsat 35e C-Band spot beam solution. Each satellite network will connect offices and affiliates in over 20 countries to central headquarters in Accra, Ghana and Dakar, Sengal. Equipped with H8 Remote Gateways at each remote site, an array of mission-critical and time dependent banking and corporate applications will be reliably and cost-effectively supported at IP rates of up to 8 Mbps to the central location.
In collaboration with Intelsat, each international bank chose Heights due to the platform’s mix of high throughput, extremely high network efficiencies and overall network intelligence. Due to the immediacy and importance of the financial data, the banks required a high-end platform that could provide the highest possible reliability teamed with minimal jitter and latency performance to ensure that applications worked optimally. Having successfully worked with Comtech EF Data connectivity solutions in the past, these two banks trust Heights as the best choice to upgrade their satellite networks to meet these strict demands, optimize performance, maximize productivity and offer room for growth with minimal post implementation intervention.
“The open architecture element of our Intelsat EpicNG fleet allows us to collaborate with our customers to determine the best ground solution fit for their needs,” said Jean-Philippe Gillet, Intelsat’s Vice President and General Manager, Broadband. “The Heights solution provides the best combination of performance, price and future scalability for our African banking customers’ requirements today and into the future without need for site revisits as traffic demands grow. The backwards-compatible nature of the Intelsat EpicNG fleet allows for a graceful transition of services from Intelsat 903 onto Intelsat 35e while the Heights platform allows our customers across the African continent to fully realize the unique performance advancements of our new design.”
“Innovation within a competitive environment offers the attractive price for performance levels that allow satellite service providers and their end users to prosper,” said Steve Good, Senior Vice President, Premium Enterprise for Comtech EF Data. “We are happy to team the increased performance levels of the unique Intelsat EpicNG design with the capabilities of our Heights Networking Platform to allow these two international banks to unleash the full potential of their satellite infrastructure solutions. The significant uplink gains offered by Intelsat EpicNG are a perfect match to the ability of the Heights platform to support the highest bi-directional throughputs in the industry. In addition, the headroom offered within the satellite network design offers significant growth potential for the future with minimal additional costs.”