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Satnews Daily
August 23rd, 2010

Spacenet... A RUS For Alaska + Hawaii (SATCOM)


[SatNews] Spacenet Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd. (Nasdaq: GILT), has been awarded federal grant funding from the Rural Utility Service (RUS) under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The grant will allow it to provide broadband service to rural unserved markets in Alaska and Hawaii through its “StarBand Open Skies” initiative. Spacenet will offer its StarBand broadband-over-satellite service to these regions for $0 down, including equipment and standard installation, and an entry-level monthly service fee of $50. StarBand is basing its StarBand Open Skies service offerings for Alaska and Hawaii on custom versions of its Nova 1000 and 1500 products. Both packages exceed the performance requirements set forth by the RUS for this program. The Nova 1000 service provides download speeds of up to 1 Mbps and upload speeds of 200 Kbps, and the Nova 1500 service provides download speeds of up to 1.5 Mbps and upload speeds of 256 Kbps. Both services also offer value added features including: 10 free hours of dial access per month for backup or traveling; virus protection; spam filtering; access to the StarBand Member Portal powered by Google; 24X7 online support; and as many as 15 email accounts.