[Satellite TODAY 7-1-13] Maju Nusa, a Malaysian satellite service provider, has put its faith behind O3b Networks, by signing a key contract only days before O3b successfully launched its first four satellites. Shahruddin Salehuddin, managing director, Maju Nusa, told SatelliteTODAY.com, that the process of signing this deal took about six months overall.

 

     In fact, Salehuddin had hinted at a deal with O3b, when Via Satellite spoke to him in a separate interview in May. “More and more, as we look at how things are growing, and the capacity that is required by customers, the issue for us is getting a hold of the necessary capacity,” He had said. “We need more capacity and we need to have more bandwidth. In Malaysia, there is an issue of lack of capacity. However, I believe that new high throughput satellites will come to the region to alleviate the shortage. We are also looking at O3b as a potential option for us in the future.”

 

     Salehuddin admits one of the reasons why Maju Nusa signed the deal with O3b was the lack of capacity options elsewhere. “We needed to expand capacity; the timing was right. If you look at their technology, it is proven technology. It is all very traditional technology. I felt comfortable that it should all be able to work. We think we will need the equivalent of another 160 Mhz,” he added.

 

 

     In terms of the company’s bandwidth requirements, Salehuddin added, “the offer from O3b was an eye opener for us, especially because customers want to bring in 3G and 4G services. So, these are the future, and we really have to prepare for them. And, given the fact, we have been awarded a contract from the Malaysian government for backhaul services. That made us to look around in terms of providing the services to these sites. We had just secured a contract for 138 sites for base stations. It makes more economic sense for us to use O3b. The magic number with O3b was 10 Mbps per customer terminal.”

 

 

     Salehuddin admits Maju Nusa is “quite young” in the industry, and that it has only been offering satellite services for under a year. The company started with around 46 Mhz, which is enough capacity for two VSAT hubs. “Right now [before O3b],we are using 120 Mhz of bandwidth, which is almost 3.5 transponders of capacity. We still believe there is plenty of room to grow especially via high throughput satellites, there is growth to be had in rural areas of Malaysia, and we are finding that 4 Mbps is a common thing. We see demands for capacity to continue to increase, especially as part of the USP requirements,” he said.