SES Networks’ longtime customer in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) — Gilat Telecom — has expanded their satellite capacity under contract with SES Networks in the country, now topping more than 3.0 Gbps.

Gilat has been providing Kinshasa, the capital and largest city in DRC, with expansive internet connectivity services for many years, and has seen unprecedented network reliability and resiliency from the SES Networks service. The company has now also launched service over SES’s O3b Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellite fleet to a second DRC location, bringing fiber-equivalent internet to customers in Lubumbashi.

Kinsasha, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Gilat Telecom is based in Israel and offers satellite and fiber-based connectivity services in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Gilat first deployed SES Networks’ ultra-low latency, high throughput connectivity in 2014, following the launch of the first four satellites in the O3b Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) fleet, becoming the first to use the new connectivity in Africa, and the second worldwide. Since that time, Gilat has seen strong and steady customer growth in DRC as customers have responded to the high-performance internet service and the applications it enables, and has effectively become one of the largest MEO satellite solutions users in the world.

As the need for reliable connectivity has expanded in DRC, SES Networks worked with Gilat to implement a diverse routing solution to further increase network uptime and availability. With this solution, ground terminals were placed in multiple locations throughout the region, and an advanced intelligent routing platform was implemented to enable intelligent switching across multiple satellite links resulting in extremely high link availability.

Dan Zajicek, CEO of Gilat Telecom, noted that for years, improving connectivity has been a high priority for the company and SES Networks’ MEO satellites were selected because of their unique ability to rival fiber performance, without having to rely on any land-based link from a neighboring country.

Carole Kamaitha, Vice President of Africa Sales at SES Networks, added that the shared commitment between the comanies to expand and improve connectivity has enabled barriers to be broken together and to design creative and unique solutions for DRC.