Posted: 28th Apr, 2011 By: MarkJ


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).
Mark Wynn, Avonline Managing Director, said:
"Avonline has been at the forefront of UK satellite communication solutions for the past ten years, and we are delighted to be the first major UK satellite services provider to sign a contract for the next-generation Tooway™ satellite broadband service.
With speeds of up to 10 Mbps covering 100% of the UK, this service will ensure that everyone who wants a fast and reliable broadband connection can now get connected. This is great news for people living in rural areas without a decent broadband connection or for people who are too far from the exchange to get a fast, consistent broadband service.
It will also be a great boost to small businesses and for those who work from home. With Tooway™, they will now be able to take advantage of broadband services with similar speeds and prices to their urban counterparts."
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.