Posted: 17th Nov, 2010 By: MarkJ

UK Satellite ISP Avanti has announced that the first of its next generation broadband satellites (
HYLAS 1), which will offer download speeds of up to 8Mbps to everybody in the country from around £25 per month, has been fully fuelled and will be integrated with the
Ariane 5 rocket tomorrow ahead of the
launch on Friday 26th November 2010.
The launch will be webcast live at
www.arianespace.com and will occur in a window between 18.39 and 21.54 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Eutelsat's competing 10Mbps capable
KA-SAT (TooWay) Satellite is expected to follow with a launch in December 2010, assuming it isn't lost like their last attempt (
W3B).
HYLAS 1 could provide at least some of the answers to serving extremely remote parts of the UK with faster broadband internet access, thus helping the UK government to meet its
2Mbps for all (USC) pledge by 2015. However much will depend on whether the huge hardware and installation costs are subsidised to make them more affordable.