Tawara Atoll, Kiribati. Photo: Government of Kiribati

[Via Satellite 03-09-2016] O3b Networks and SpeedCast International have announced an agreement to provide connectivity over the O3b satellite network to residents of the Republic of Kiribati. AmalgamatedTelecom Holdings (Kiribati) Limited (ATHKL), a subsidiary of Amalgamated Telecom Holdings of Fiji, will provide the serive to consumers, businesses and government customers.

The Republic of Kiribati has a population of about 100,000 living on 33 atolls and islands, across 3.5 million square km of ocean. The dispersed geography makes laying undersea fiber cables unreasonably expensive and time-consuming. Kiribati is in the final stages of testing the O3b link, and will first deploy the service to Tarawa, the largest island in the country.

The multi-year agreement provides flexibility to expand capacity where required, to ensure ATHKL can provide high performance connectivity for HD video, e-commerce, online education, or cloud services. O3b’s Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites orbit at 8,062km above the Earth and have a latency of less than 150 msec — 25 percent that of the Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) satellite systems connecting Kiribati. The switch to the lower latency, higher throughput O3b service will transform the island nation providing connectivity equivalent to long-haul fiber, while avoiding the exorbitant cost of laying an undersea cable to the island, according to O3b.