MTN Signs Onto Intelsat’s EpicNG Platform for Maritime Broadband
By Jeffrey Hill | July 26, 2012
[Satellite TODAY 07-26-12] MTN Satellite Communications (MTN) has signed a long-term agreement with Intelsat to acquire maritime Ku-band capacity on the Intelsat EpicNG open-architecture satellite platform, MTN announced July 25.
MTN would leverage the first Intelsat EpicNG satellite, Intelsat 29e, to provide more than 2 gigabits of capacity for MTN’s cruise and yacht customers in the Caribbean once the satellite is launched in 2015. MTN will then partially transition its custom-designed service to the Intelsat EpicNG platform.
“After thoroughly evaluating several high-throughput satellite alternatives, we concluded that the Intelsat EpicNG Ku-band spot beams were the ideal solution for the mission-critical needs of our customers,” MTN Senior Vice President of Network Engineering Kevin McCarthy said in a statement. “The innovative Intelsat EpicNG platform will give us unprecedented control, allowing us to customize every aspect of the service. The resulting design will provide unmatched throughput and reliability, while maintaining backwards compatibility with the rest of our global Ku-band network. Our cruise and yacht customers will be able to seamlessly roam into our high-throughput beams with their existing Ku-band antennas.”