SpeedCast International Limited (ASX: SDA) been awarded a multi-year service agreement by Roshan, Afghanistan's leading telecommunications provider, to upgrade their cellular backhaul network to support 3G services over satellite in Zabul province in southwestern Afghanistan.
SpeedCast's CelCast infographic.
Roshan has more than 6.5 million active subscribers across 287 districts and cities in all 34 provinces of Afghanistan. SpeedCast’s cellular backhaul suite of solutions, under the CelCast™ name, are designed to optimize satellite traffic in telecommunication environments, lowering the total cost of ownership and bringing unrivaled quality of service to its customers’ networks.
According to PJ Beylier, the CEO of SpeedCast, with the upgraded network, operators like Roshan will be able to provide new and better service offerings to end users by providing reliable and scalable connectivity. Once customers have access to better connectivity, that inevitably leads to a rapid increase in bandwidth demand. The new backhaul network over satellite also allows operators to explore and develop new business opportunities and revenue streams, such as offering broadband and managed network solutions to banks, governments and home users using VSAT. This is the company's first 3G backhaul service deployment in Afghanistan and provides the firm with a strong foothold in the growing cellular backhaul market in the Middle East, as mobile operators and service providers are upgrading their service capacity to meet the surging data adoption in the enterprise and consumer markets.