Digicel Pacific Bolsters Coverage across Papua New Guinea with Additional O3b Capacity from SES
02 November 2022 - 10:00AM
Business Wire
40% increase in MEO capacity will enable
Digicel to rapidly restore high-performance communications networks
in times of outages
Digicel Pacific, the leading telecommunications provider in the
Pacific region, is bolstering its coverage in Papua New Guinea,
leveraging SES’s O3b medium-earth orbit (MEO) satellite system to
provide its customers with seamless connectivity following damage
to the international Pipe Pacific Cable (PPC) which typically
connects Papua New Guinea to Australia and rest of the world.
The additional O3b services will continue to help Digicel
Pacific maintain connectivity during outages caused by such cable
breaks while also expanding coverage across the remote parts of the
country, a crucial enhancement for the 80% of Papua New Guineans
residing in rural areas.
The support from SES comes at a critical time for the South
Pacific island after a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in September caused
damage to multiple cable systems, resulting in large disruption to
data services across most of the country. During the disruption,
SES assisted Digicel Pacific with emergency bandwidth, providing an
increase of 40% in high-performance, low-latency O3b services
deployed across 12 sites throughout the country to keep communities
connected. SES also stepped in with an incremental 3 Gbps of
capacity and additional ground equipment to enable Digicel Pacific
to restore its network connectivity and critical communications
services for both consumers and telecommunication customers.
With this move, SES confirms its position in the region as the
only satellite provider who has the capability to commit to
high-throughput, low-latency services to mobile network operators,
enabling them to quickly restore communications networks in times
of outages. Likewise, for the past decade, governments and
businesses around the Pacific – including other islands prone to
natural disasters like the Kingdom of Tonga – have similarly
leveraged the O3b system to provide resiliency to their networks in
times of need. The availability of high-speed bandwidth and
low-latency connectivity has played a key role in narrowing the
digital divide in Papua New Guinea, particularly in parts of the
nation not reachable by fibre.
“Unfortunately, we have seen more frequent and intense natural
disasters occurring in the Pacific Islands over the last decade,
which is why safeguarding networks and providing network resilience
is more critical than ever,” said John Turnbull, Director for Fixed
Data, Pacific at SES. “SES and Digicel Pacific are committing to
connect residents in Papua New Guinea with the high-performance and
most reliable connectivity needed to accelerate restoration
efforts. With O3b mPOWER, we can further leverage the system’s
future-proof scalability and guaranteed performance to achieve an
even higher level of network resilience and safety.”
“We are grateful for SES’s swift response in provisioning
additional capacity to enable us to plug urgent and unprecedented
connectivity gaps. Our partnership with SES has been critical to
not just disaster relief efforts in Papua New Guinea, but in
connecting remote populations across the Pacific region. We have
had a long relationship with SES, who understands the region and
steps up to support Pacific nations in times of need, connecting
the otherwise unconnected people in the region. We look forward to
exploring the enhanced capabilities of SES’s O3b mPOWER satellite
system to fortify network connections thus minimising network
disruptions in the event of future disasters,” said Colin Stone,
Chief Executive Officer at Digicel PNG Ltd.
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About SES
SES has a bold vision to deliver amazing experiences everywhere
on earth by distributing the highest quality video content and
providing seamless connectivity around the world. As the leader in
global content connectivity solutions, SES operates the world’s
only multi-orbit constellation of satellites with the unique
combination of global coverage and high performance, including the
commercially-proven, low-latency Medium Earth Orbit O3b system. By
leveraging a vast and intelligent, cloud-enabled network, SES is
able to deliver high-quality connectivity solutions anywhere on
land, at sea or in the air, and is a trusted partner to the world’s
leading telecommunications companies, mobile network operators,
governments, connectivity and cloud service providers,
broadcasters, video platform operators and content owners. SES’s
video network carries ~8,000 channels and has an unparalleled reach
of 366 million households, delivering managed media services for
both linear and non-linear content. The company is listed on Paris
and Luxembourg stock exchanges (Ticker: SESG). Further information
is available at: www.ses.com.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221101006355/en/
Suzanne Ong External Communications Tel. +352 710 725 500
suzanne.ong@ses.com
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