A UK based Satellite internet provider, Avonline, has signed a new £4.44m (€5 million) contract with Eutelsat (Skylogic) that allows the ISP to offer faster 10Mbps download speeds (4Mbps uploads) to isolated rural homes and businesses via the latest KA-SAT spacecraft (Tooway10mb).

KA-SAT claims to be "the first European High Throughput Satellite", although it launched around one month after Avanti Communication's HYLAS 1 (here), which frequently makes a similar claim and has already entered commercial operation. However, so far the first real public price and service details for HYLAS 1 have only deployed a maximum download speed of 8Mbps (2.5Mbps uploads) (here).


The satellite itself, which launched in December last year and has a total capacity of over 70Gbps, is currently still on track to enter full commercial service during mid-2011 (initial estimates pegged a live date in late-May). As for AVonline, they claim to be the "UK’s largest provider of Tooway™ services" and operate a team of approximately 400 engineers. Another ISP also plans to offer the service - Broadband Wherever, which includes a few hints about its possible pricing.

The KA-SAT satellite is currently on station at 9° East and a home or business solution will consist, as per usual, of a small satellite dish and a modem connected to the PC via the Ethernet. Sadly we have to wait a bit longer for the final pricing but it's nice to finally have some real competition in this area.