Avanti to supply Northern Ireland satellite broadband
Northern Ireland’s DETI have funded Avanti Communications to the tune of £1.1m to provide satellite broadband services to NI residents and businesses unable to access fixed line broadband.
The 5 year contract with BT to provide 100% coverage of 512k broadband is coming to an end in March 2009 and the Avanti contract will provide continuity of service to the ~800 users of BT’s satellite service. Seup fee for new connections is £75 and residential service costs £25/month. Existing BT customers will not have to pay the connection fee.
Avanti will be initially using rented satellite capacity pending launch of their Hylas platform later this year.
The DETI have a number of other initiatives underway, including a sub-loop unbundling trial (fibre to the cabinet or FTTC). It is good to see actual initiatives and money being deployed, rather than the English situation of press releases and talk.
Tags: fttc, Northern Ireland, Satellite, SLU, Subsidy
Category: Broadband Availability, Broadband Fibre
April 30th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
I hope that the Current service they are providing to Rural Customers in Northern Ireland is not anexample of what is to come.
asa current customer under the new DETI Northern Ireland Satellite Broadband contract just started I can honestly say it is Pathetic with latency that reqires several attempts before a page loads and speeds which are currenlty at about 25% of those advertised. To be honest “Its a Joke”!!!
May 4th, 2009 at 9:53 am
high latency is inevitable with satellite – ye cannae change the laws of physics – but it shouldn’t be as bad as you imply.