The European satellite telecoms service provider Eutelsat and the social network Facebook have signed a joint partnership agreement with the satellite telecommunications company Spacecom. Through this agreement, Eutelsat and Facebook will use all of the broadband connectivity of the future AMOS-6 satellite, which Spacecom plans to launch in the second half of 2016, to provide broadband Internet access by satellite in sub-Saharan Africa. In a press release published by the two companies, they explain that their aim is to respond “to a booming demand”.
In Africa, many remote areas of urban centers still remain without access to telecommunications. It is mainly the rural areas where the majority of the African population lives. The isolation of these areas or the slowness of national telecom deployment policies mean that they are currently still deprived of fiber optics or radio telecom stations. With the satellite, the problems of isolation are quickly resolved. No need to deploy large-scale ground equipment to reach these consumers.
Several operators such as Vodacom, Orange Niger and Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaçoes de Mozambique have also understood the great benefit they can derive from the satellite to cover areas where they are not very present. This is how they signed agreements with the American satellite telecoms service provider Intelsat.
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