Kingston TLI, the satellite services arm of the Kingston Communications Group, is adding two new C-Band earth stations for Indian Ocean coverage. This will triple the number of earth stations Kingston can offer customers needing circuits in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).

The new earth stations will have Standard A and Standard B antennas and are designed to operate on the Intelsat 7, 8 and 9 series of satellites, said Chris Russell, deputy managing director of Kingston TLI.

In addition to providing additional satellite paths between the United Kingdom and the IOR, the new earth stations will be able to operate with satellites at 64 degrees East and either 60 degrees East or 66 degrees East, depending on market demand. This “will provide customers with much greater flexibility when securing capacity, which is generally tight on all IOR satellites,” Russell said.

Kingston TLI opened its first earth station for the IOR only last August, but the company has found that demand has outstripped its capacity. Stephen Carne, Intelsat’s regional director for Europe, said Kingston TLI’s additional earth stations will be welcome, “particularly to enhance the meeting of unprecedented demand for Internet Protocol services and Internet backbone connections to remote areas of the world. This is our fastest-growing sector, with demand for IP services doubling every six months. “We are deploying the first two of our seven new high-power Intelsat 9 satellites to the IOR early next year, and Kingston TLI will be well placed to take advantage of them,” Carne said.

Kingston TLI also announced that it is “hardwiring” its earth stations to the global Internet backbone of UUnet, the Internet subsidiary of MCI Worldcom. Customers will be able to connect directly to UUnet’s European OC-48 and STM-16 backbones, “making Kingston TLI’s Internet backbone connectivity in the United Kingdom equivalent to a direct US connection,” according to Kris Miller, business development manager at Kingston TLI.

“Customers will be able to connect directly to the UUnet core backbone in a single satellite hop,” he said. This will cut the lead-time for starting new IP circuits and “provide greater flexibility in response to customer requests for upgrades and IP bandwidth growth,” Miller said.