Comtech Telecommunications Corp.'s Tempe, Arizona-based subsidiary, Comtech EF Data Corp., which is part of Comtech's Commercial Solutions segment, has announced that their Heights Networking Platform has been selected to expand services for two leading international banking organizations throughout the African continent via Intelsat's wide beam and innovative Intelsat EpicNG C-band spot beam services.
The platform will be leveraged by two different banks to address the increasing transaction volumes of corporate banking and mining customers, and will upgrade and complement existing Comtech EF Data solutions. Satellite hardware for this platform has been shipped and the network platform will begin operating on Intelsat 903 wide beam capacity with a seamless transition planned onto Intelsat 35e, an Intelsat EpicNG High Throughput Satellite launched on July 5, 2017.
The Heights platform, supporting star and mesh connectivity, was selected as the best fit solution for both projects due to the platform's ability to leverage the significant performance advantages offered by the unique high throughput Intelsat 35e C-band spot beam solution. Each satellite network will connect offices and affiliates in over 20 countries to central headquarters in Accra, Ghana and Dakar, Sengal. Equipped with H8 Remote Gateways at each remote site, an array of mission-critical and time dependent banking and corporate applications will be reliably and cost-effectively supported at IP rates of up to 8 Mbps to the central location.
In collaboration with Intelsat, each international bank chose Heights due to the platform's mix of high throughput, extremely high network efficiencies and overall network intelligence. Due to the immediacy and importance of the financial data, the banks required a high-end platform that could provide the highest possible reliability teamed with minimal jitter and latency performance to ensure that applications worked optimally. Having successfully worked with Comtech EF Data connectivity solutions in the past, these two banks trust Heights as the best choice to upgrade their satellite networks to meet these strict demands, optimize performance, maximize productivity and offer room for growth with minimal post implementation intervention.
Jean-Philippe Gillet, Intelsat's Vice President and General Manager, Broadband, remarked that the open architecture element of the Intelsat EpicNG fleet allows the company to collaborate with customers to determine the best ground solution fit for their needs. The Heights solution provides the best combination of performance, price and future scalability for the firm's African banking customers' requirements today and into the future without need for site revisits as traffic demands grow. The backwards-compatible nature of the Intelsat EpicNG fleet allows for a graceful transition of services from Intelsat 903 onto Intelsat 35e, while the Heights platform allows customers across the African continent to fully realize the unique performance advancements of our new design.
Steve Good, Senior Vice President, Premium Enterprise for Comtech EF Data., stated that innovation within a competitive environment offers the attractive price for performance levels that allow satellite service providers and their end users to prosper. This team-up with the increased performance levels of the unique Intelsat EpicNG design with the capabilities of the Heights Networking Platform allows these two international banks to unleash the full potential of their satellite infrastructure solutions. The significant uplink gains offered by Intelsat EpicNG are a perfect match to the ability of the Heights platform to support the highest bi-directional throughputs in the industry. In addition, the headroom offered within the satellite network design offers significant growth potential for the future with minimal additional costs.