Colombian local connectivity service provider INRED and global satellite operator SES have kicked off a project to deliver high-throughput satellite services for the Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies (MinTic) to support digital inclusion projects across the country.
Under the project, called "Zonas Comunitarias para la Paz", INRED will use SES’s Managed Enterprise service delivered via its high throughput SES-17 and SES-14 geostationary satellites to connect 300 new sites in remote, sparsely-populated areas.
As part of the project, INRED will provide free Wi-Fi services to historically unconnected areas across Colombia via SES’s satellites. This will allow INRED to quickly deliver broadband services to 300 sparsely-populated areas that cannot be reached by fibre terrestrial networks, with the ability to easily scale up capacity in the future if needed.
INRED and SES have been collaborating with the Colombian government for the last six years, and have connected more than 2,000 sites in some of the most hard-to-reach areas of the country.
“We have previously enabled INRED to connect nearly one million people in 1300 sites across Colombia with Wi-Fi access,” said Omar Trujillo, VP of Enterprise Americas at SES. “By expanding our collaboration with INRED, we can bring more technology-based services to more people across the region to help them take advantage of tools and resources that can help generate new opportunities.”
SES's Managed Enterprise Service is a turnkey managed service designed to enable customers to deliver ultra-reliable, high-performance broadband services to any remote business site. SES said it can install VSATs quickly, allowing INRED to meet the aggressive timelines for completing the project.
“SES’s satellite technologies provide INRED with the ability to easily scale up capacity to meet MinTic’s requirements, while reducing the overall cost and complexity of bringing connectivity to more rural and isolated areas of Colombia,” says INRED CEO John Ureña.
