Photo: NorthTelecom

NorthTelecom has entered into an agreement with a Philippine-based Public Telecommunications Entity (PTE) to supply satellite ground hardware, space segment capacity, and internet bandwidth for the Philippine rural market, especially the unserved and underserved areas. The capacity requirement for the three-year project is estimated to be around 1.5 to 2 transponders and the number of remote terminals is expected to reach 1,000 units by the end of the period. The primary objective of the project is to connect the rural market segments without internet access, including the Local Government Units (LGUs), academe, business establishments and general public.

NorthTelecom will use the latest technology from its vendor-partner for the ground equipment and its teleport in Singapore and Malaysia to serve the Philippine market. For large-scale Virtual Private Network (VPN) requirements of the public and private sectors, the provisioning of a hub is seriously under consideration.

“Due to geographical constraints, there are still areas which can only be reached via satellite connectivity. As an archipelago of about 7,100 islands, with natural geographical barriers, the Philippines will always have uses or applications for a satellite network since many areas will remain beyond the economic reach of the terrestrial backbones now in place,’’ said NorthTelecom’s CTO and managing director for Asia & Pacific, Mahdi Mehrabi.