O3b makes Pacific progress
August 29, 2014
By Chris Forrester
O3b is a satellite constellation, backed by operator SES, and designed to bring broadband services to the ‘other 3 billion’ underserved people living in the tropics. The St Helier, Jersey-based company says it has signed up 10 wholesale customers in 11 Pacific islands, and contracted for a total 4.3 Gb/s of capacity.
The news emerged at the start of a United Nations-backed conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS) which officially opens on Sept 1 in Samoa. O3b’s local customer, Digicel, is a leading service provider across the Pacific and, leveraging O3b’s unique high bandwidth, low latency connection, Digicel will also be providing connectivity throughout the conference, allowing UN delegates to experience the fiber like service delivered over satellite.
O3b now has 8 satellites in orbit, and the operator has won other high-profile customers in Pakistan, Nigeria and with cruise ship operator Royal Caribbean. O3b is also backed by Google, Liberty Global and others.
O3b’s CEO Steve Collar, speaking ahead of the event said: “O3b was founded on the belief that access to high speed connectivity is a right not a privilege. It is our mission to connect the unconnected and to offer digital parity to everyone on earth. With digital parity, all children can be educated, all people can participate in global conversations and global commerce and the world benefits by inclusion of those who were silent because of the lack of a simple right, the right to high speed connectivity.”