[Satellite TODAY Insider 03-29-11] Gilat Satellite Networks signed its second Latin America deal of 2011, winning a $14.5 million broadband contract with Peru’s Agency for Promotion of Private Investment (ProInversion) to provide Internet access and telephony services throughout the country’s rural regions.
    The project, funded by Fondo de Inversión en Telecomunicaciones, will use Gilat’s solution to connect more than 770 communities across rural Peru, allowing more than 215,000 people access to essential communication services and encompassing the provision of telecommunication services for remote rural communities located throughout Peru’s Apurimac and Ene River Valleys and Camisea. Gilat’s network is scheduled for installation within the next year, and Gilat will provide services during the following four years.    
    Gilat CEO Amiram Levinberg told Satellite TODAY Insider that the company is optimistic about its prospects in Latin America. “In 2010, we didn’t see very big changes in the market in Latin America, but in 2011 we see Latin America as one of our potential big growth markets.”
    In January, Gilat announced that the Colombian Ministry of Information Technology and Communications and the National Fund of Development had extended and amended agreements for the provision of services under the Rural Communitarian Telephony and Telecentros projects for an additional one-year term. The extended service agreements, valued at approximately $21 million, are for projects that provide telephony and public data access to remote communities throughout rural Colombia.
    The current extension of the agreements covers approximately 1,600 sites that will be served by Gilat throughout 2011 and includes certain performance indicators and schedules of new installations.

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