[SatNews] SES Broadband Services (SBBS) has announced that the company's Astra Connect solution will be used as part of a pilot program to connect homes and businesses in the UK which cannot benefit from a Fiber-to-the-Cabinet deployment due to their remote locations.
 
The Government’s Department for Culture, Media & Sport selected SBBS’ distribution partner Satellite Internet to receive a grant after the British-based ISP applied for a part of its Broadband Delivery UK £10 million Innovation Fund, which was announced earlier this year to explore ways to take high-speed broadband to the most remote and hardest to reach places in the UK.
 
Satellite Internet has been awarded funding to run a pilot project which will see several new satellite networks installed to provide superfast connections. A feasibility study, carried out in partnership with Connecting Devon and Somerset, will be conducted first, before deployment starts later this year. This will be done through individual Astra Connect connections, where a satellite dish is installed directly on each property and Astra Connect for communities, a connection to a single point which is then shared through a local network infrastructure such as WiFi. The communities’ solution was also selected earlier this year to be deployed to more than 20 remote German villages in the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern region.

The SES Astra Connect info site is located at http://www.onastra.com/