Solomon Telekom Company Limited, trading under the name Our Telekom, is expanding its partnership with SES Networks to enable faster and improved mobile and internet services to communities scattered throughout more than 900 islands within the Solomon Islands archipelago.
Under the agreement announced by SES, Our Telekom, the leading operator in the Solomon Islands and Oceania region, has contracted capacity on SES’ Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) fleet to enhance connectivity between remote provinces and the nation’s capital, Honiara. This comes in response to rapidly increasing data consumption by residents and enterprise customers across the isles, especially in the archipelago’s outermost stretches.
The reliability of GEO connectivity complements fibre-like internet speeds that local populations already enjoy through Our Telekom’s existing partnership with SES Networks. Last November, the telco launched its first 4G/LTE network in Solomon Islands powered by the O3b Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) constellation, and has upgraded bandwidth every four months since. With additional GEO capacity, Our Telekom brings improved connectivity services to communities and businesses located on even the farthest ends of the islands.
“Establishing connectivity across an archipelago, especially one comprising hundreds of islands, had until recently been a perennial challenge,” said Loyley Ngira, CEO at Our Telekom. “With SES Networks’ GEO-MEO complimentary connectivity pairing, we have an ideal solution that provides quality connectivity for a variety of customer needs. We are excited to extend our partnership with SES Networks, and make further inroads to empower people and businesses with significantly enhanced connectivity, no matter where they are within the country.”
“We are pleased that Our Telekom recognizes the essential advantages of our GEO-MEO network, especially for geographies as varied as Solomon Islands,” said Imran Malik, Vice President, Fixed Data, and Asia-Pacific at SES Networks. “Over the past four years, our partnership with Our Telekom has proven fruitful, starting with establishing baseline 2G connectivity throughout the archipelago, to improved 3G and 4G/LTE services today. With the Solomon Islands’ digital transformation still underway, we are proud to continue our support for Our Telekom as they bring improved mobile and broadband services to their customers.”
