Aurora Gold Mine. Photo: Guyana Goldfield

[Via Satellite 10-31-2016] O3b Networks announced that Guyanese service provider E-Networks will be delivering O3b’s high-speed, low latency connectivity to Guyana Goldfield’s Aurora Gold Mine. The Canadian mining company has agreed to lease its own O3b terminal and dedicated bandwidth for three years to link their mining facilities to offices in Georgetown and Canada, helping to better track productivity while greatly improving overall communications.

Using the O3b satellite-enabled network for high-performance internet connectivity was a more cost-effective option than fiber, according to the company. The path for a fiber cable to the mine would be a significant distance and would cut through dense rainforest, all adding to the construction costs. The prospect of falling trees rupturing a cable was a risk as well. And the long distance ruled out microwave as a viable option.

“The implementation of O3b at the Aurora Gold Mine has greatly improved the information technology capabilities of the organization,” said Rohit Tellis, CIO for Guyana Goldfields “The performance of business-critical applications like [Enterprise Resource Planning] ERP, logistics fleet tracking, Sharefile and Office 365 has improved exponentially in turn driving our staff’s productivity. In addition, the lower latency and increased bandwidth has allowed us to implement new applications like voice over IP and remote infrastructure monitoring, which would not have been possible previously. We are now exploring a disaster recovery project. We have achieved all this while reducing our costs. Due to the very remote location of the mine, the O3b satellite service was put in place as an alternative to a capital heavy microwave project which would have taken over a decade to achieve an ROI.”