Talia, a satellite voice and Internet service provider, known for its operations in Africa and the Middle East, is now targeting becoming part of the vibrant Latin American communications market with its services. 
   Travis Mooney, Talia’s COO, told the IBC E-Daily that this will be a focus for the company over the coming months. “We want to get more involved in the Latin American market over the next 12 months. We have our toes in the water,but we haven’t made any true commitments there. Part of it is the way we run the business. We need to go into a market and understand it ourselves and make some alliances, but we have not really done that in Latin America yet. I would think that would be a big market for us,” he says.
   Talia is an established service provider in emerging markets. It offers services such as voice and data solutions, channel distribution and backhaul services, playout services, and occasional use services, as well as connectivity over fiber services. It works with a number of satellite operators to get the capacity it needs to serve customers. 
   It recently launched new services including Talia SpeedNet and Talia SafeNet as part of its broadband service package. For the SpeedNet service, the servers use advanced caching, pre-fetching and optimization algorithms to improve Internet access. It is hosted at the Talia teleport and is automatically enabled for all Talia broadband customers. The SafeNet service filters Internet content to provide a more family-friendly connection. It is suited for families with children, schools, and other areas where unrestricted Internet access might be unwelcome.
   The company has a strong presence in Africa and the Middle East and has seen rapid revenue growth over recent years. Mooney says the company expects to see revenue growth of 40-50 percent this year, which is slightly down from previous years. 
   While overall growth may be down, Mooney believes the Middle East market is holding up better than expected for the company. “We are seeing strong overall growth in Africa. We are seeing surprising growth in the Middle East. You would think with the American pullout in Iraq, the region would be awash with capacity. We have taken on extra capacity for both regions. We thought there might be a softening in the Middle East, but there really hasn’t been,” he says.
   While the Middle East and Latin America are promising targets, Africa remains the “biggest growing market” for the company. Mooney admits there is a “great opportunity” for satellite here. “The infrastructure, by and large, is still woeful. It creates a great opportunity for satellite. We are not only seeing data communications and inter-connectivity requests, we are also seeing things like broadcaster requests. Broadcasters are looking for DTH and playout services. We have got a pretty good position established in West Africa, and we are looking in the East Africa market as well, especially with South Sudan and Nigeria, and then going into Francophone West Africa. That is a bit of a challenge for us, just due to linguistic issues, but I expect better growth in Francophone West Africa. I expect an almost Iraq style gold rush for satellite in South Sudan,” Mooney says.
   Mooney highlights a number of countries such as Liberia, South Sudan and Nigeria where the opportunities for satellite are on the increase. “I would say Liberia is one of our core targets. In Southern Africa, Angola is a core target. We are working with a data communications licensee there. I think Angola is a little behind the times, but is ready for a big boom. I think South Sudan will see a lot of NGO money. While Liberia is not the easiest place in the world to do business, it seems like a good market. There is always a country like Nigeria, which is always going to produce business. It is the largest country in Africa,” he says. 
   The market, however, is changing, and Mooney admits where the company sees revenue growth going forward is not necessarily the same as it did a few months ago. He comments, “If you had asked me 18 months ago about where the future of our sales would be, I would have said 100 percent Africa compared to the Middle East. There was expected to be a huge softening in the Middle East, but it hasn’t really happened. We have been very lucky to continue to grow our business thanks to a shift in strategy from smaller players into larger chunks of business. We have seen markets such as video distribution really see good growth.”
   The dynamics of the Middle East satellite market are definitely changing. “In the Middle East, there has been a big shift in our end customers. It has moved from customers being privately funded to those being funded by government resources. You have customers like the U.S. government, European governments as well as the Iraqi government. That has really cushioned us from any economic impact in the Middle East,” says Mooney. “In Africa, I don’t think these are credit markets. Africa is a cash market. If you have cash you spend it; if you don’t, then you don’t spend it. I think that the global downturn has not hit there in the same way it hit the rest of us.”
   While things are looking good for the company across the Middle East and Africa, Mooney admits it could be a while before consumer broadband has a huge impact. “I don’t think we are going to see a massive upswing in consumer broadband in the Middle East and Africa. I don’t think the market is mature enough right now. To have better penetration of good quality Internet services, you are going to need some innovative bundling strategies. You have to have projects that are self-sustaining somehow and not just funded by outside means. It is a chicken and egg situation. You can’t grow a market for an expensive satellite broadband product if people don’t use it all the time. In places like South Africa, it is fine, but in West Africa, I don’t think it is going to happen any time soon,” he says. 

Note from the Editors: South Sudan, as of this summer, is a sovereign nation.