....will be used in “The Rural Connection” project, run by Devon and Somerset County Councils (U.K.), to bring high-speed Internet services to over 1,000 of the regions’ most rural homes and businesses. The service, delivered by specialist reseller partner, ToowayDirect, will connect residents and businesses to the Internet via a small satellite dish installed on the outside of the property. The one million pounds investment will enable free installation of the Tooway™ satellite broadband service for users who live in the qualifying area. Customers will have access to download speeds of up to 10 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 4 Mbps and a range of tariffs, together with a programme of free ICT training and support. Devon and Somerset County Councils won EU funding for the project from the European Rural Development Programme for England, which is being matched by the private sector.
“The Rural Connection” project will significantly improve internet services to selected areas around the Devon and Somerset border that currently receive very slow or no broadband. The project will run alongside the wider Connecting Devon and Somerset Programme, which aims to deliver superfast connectivity to at least 85 percent of homes and businesses and improved connectivity to all where the private sector has no plans to invest in the infrastructure. The new-generation Tooway™ service is delivered via Eutelsat’s innovative KA-SAT satellite, which entered commercial service in May 2011. With its total capacity of more than 70 Gbps, KA-SAT ushers in a new era of competitively-priced, satellite-delivered services for homes and small businesses across Europe and the Mediterranean Basin. The satellite forms the cornerstone of a new satellite infrastructure, which includes eight main satellite gateways across Europe connected to the Internet by a fibre backbone ring.
Eutelsat is also going to unify the names of its satellites with the Eutelsat brand. As of March 1st, 2012, the Group’s satellites will all take the Eutelsat name, with the relevant figure for their orbital position and a letter indicating their order of arrival at that position. This logical pattern will enable our user community to immediately identify where a satellite is located and its chronology at the neighbourhood it occupies. Current in-orbit satellites will be renamed as follows: W6 at 21.5° East, for example, will become EUTELSAT 21A. The future W6A satellite will become EUTELSAT 21B. To ensure clarity, satellites at Eutelsat’s four West positions will include West in their name. For example, ATLANTIC BIRD™ 2 will become EUTELSAT 8 West A. Eutelsat’s HOT BIRD™ brand, which over 20 years has acquired an established reputation in the satellite TV industry, will be retained and associated with the Eutelsat brand and numbering system. For example, HOT BIRD™ 6 will become EUTELSAT HOT BIRD 13A.