[Satellite TODAY 01-06-11] The Colombian Ministry of Information Technology and Communications and the Colombian National Fund of Development have extended and amended agreements with Gilat Satellite Networks for the provision of services under the country’s Rural Communitarian Telephony and Telecentros projects, Gilat announced Jan. 5.
    Gilat’s contract was extended for an additional one-year term through the end of 2011 and is valued at about $21 million. The extension covers about 1,600 sites that will be served by Gilat throughout 2011 and includes certain performance indicators and schedules of new installations. The new sites include telephony sites, CACI sites and telecenters, which are equipped with telephones, computers, printers, scanners, faxes and webcams provided by Gilat.
    Gilat also will upgrade more than 850 existing CACI sites to increase the download and upload data rates from 256kbps/64kbps to 512kbps/128kbps and also transfer up to 337 existing CACIs from sites where terrestrial coverage is now available to new remote locations where broadband and telephony infrastructure have not yet existed.