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CET Teleport GmbH, a teleport operator based in Germany, has purchased an iDirect Series 15000 Universal Satellite Hub to launch a pan-African DVB-S2/ACM satellite network using newly available Ku-band capacity on Telstar's T11N satellite.

The service will launch in May and represents the first step in a longer term transfer of CET's operations to the iDirect (News - Alert) platform. iDirect is a world leader in satellite-based IP communications technology.

iDirect officials while giving this information said that CET, with T11N capacity becoming available, will begin to distribute new satellite bandwidth in Africa, targeting the South and West regions where current constraints are jeopardizing rising economic and social development.

Officials said that the network will deliver the iDirect Evolution product line's next-generation gains in bandwidth efficiency and data throughput and will leverage the integrated features of iDirect's Intelligent Platform to support enterprise and government applications.

Besides this, the company officials said that CET will also support iDirect's widely deployed iNFINITI product line.

The company plans to expand its investment in the iDirect platform to launch additional DVB-S2/ACM networks in the Middle East and Central Europe.

"It's a major event to have new satellite capacity available in Africa,” said Ken Armstrong, chief executive officer, CET Teleport GmbH, in a release. “We want to stretch this capacity as far as possible, while at the same time enabling a reliable, high-bandwidth service. The efficiency of the iDirect platform and the Evolution product line represents the best strategy for achieving our goals.”

David Harrower, regional vice president and managing director, Europe, Russia and CIS, iDirect, said that CET is bringing new opportunities to the satellite market in Africa, which is critical for nations where satellite communications represents core communications infrastructure.

Harrower said that this is an encouraging development for iDirect's strong base of partners on the ground in Africa that are often challenged by capacity limitations to keep up with growing demand.

“It's also a key opportunity for service providers that are using older or inefficient systems to upgrade to next-generation capabilities," he said.

Company officials say iDirect's Evolution platform, which is built on the DVB-S2 standard and featuring Adaptive Coding and Modulation (ACM) capabilities, delivers dramatic gains in bandwidth efficiency.

Officials also claim that the Evolution product line can deliver a 30 percent improvement in bandwidth efficiency over DVB-S systems. An additional gain of 50 percent is possible through ACM, an advanced feature of the DVB-S2 standard which iDirect has built into its Evolution product line.

Officials are of the view that these dramatic gains open new opportunities for service providers to improve support for a range of IP applications, including Virtual Private Networks (VPN), Voice over IP (VoIP), videoconferencing, enterprise networks, point of sale, SCADA, telemetry, multimedia and Internet cafes.