Eutelsat Communications, (Euronext Paris: ETL), Europe’s leading satellite operator, today announced a distribution agreement between its Skylogic subsidiary and TeliaSonera enabling the telecoms giant to provide the new generation Tooway™ satellite broadband service in Finland. TeliaSonera will use the Tooway™ service, which will be delivered via Eutelsat’s new KA-SAT satellite, to help close the digital divide by providing high-speed broadband services to customers beyond the reach of terrestrial or wireless networks.
Under the agreement, the service will roll-out first in Finland, with TeliaSonera expecting to connect thousands of customers to Tooway™ over the next three years.
With download speeds of up to 10 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 4 Mbps, Tooway™ satellite broadband will bring fast, reliable and affordable Internet access for TeliaSonera customers in areas with limited alternative solutions for broadband. The Tooway™ solution consists of a small satellite dish and a modem connected to the PC via Ethernet, giving customers Internet access with no need for a telephone line.
This new-generation Tooway™ service will be delivered via Eutelsat’s innovative KA-SAT satellite, which was launched in December 2010 and is on track to go into full commercial service mid-2011. With its total capacity of more than 70 Gbps, KA-SAT ranks as the world’s most powerful spacecraft and, as Europe’s first High-Throughput Satellite (HTS), will usher in a new era of competitively-priced, satellite-delivered services for homes and small businesses across Europe and the Mediterranean Basin. The satellite forms the cornerstone of a new European satellite infrastructure which includes eight main satellite gateways across Europe connected to the Internet by a fibre backbone ring.
“We are proud and pleased to be able to bring this latest consumer technology to Finland. For the first time, the service will make broadband available to all Finns”, says TeliaSonera Finland’s Managing Director Juha-Pekka Weckström. “We believe that the service will be popular with users in both sparsely-populated and built-up areas, because we are convinced that the high data transfer rates and reasonable pricing are an attractive combination.”
“Already selected to support National Broadband Programmes in Ireland, Switzerland and Italy, Tooway™ is perfectly positioned to serve the needs of TeliaSonera’s customers in rural and urban not spot areas,” added Arduino Patacchini, CEO of Skylogic. “We are delighted to be working with TeliaSonera to extend broadband to all, and look forward to building a close and longstanding partnership which contributes to achieving an inclusive and high-quality broadband environment in TeliaSonera’s markets.”