Applied Satellite Technology (AST) launched a maritime VSAT broadband service for organizations with vessels or land-based operations in Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific regions built on the iDirect platform, iDirect announced.
    The broadband service provides Ku-band and C-band coverage and is designed to operate on the 4000 and 6000 Sea Tel Cobham VSAT antenna range. Data rates can reach 512 kilobits per second on the inbound channel and 2 megabits per second on the outbound channel, supporting bandwidth intensive applications such as Voice over IP, remote engine monitoring, real-time data transfer and video streaming.
    The service will extend worldwide through AST’s partnership with Speedcast using Eutelsat’s global satellite network.