Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd. (Nasdaq:GILT) announced that its subsidiary Gilat To Home Peru has been selected by Banco de la Nación, Peru's state bank, to provide satellite connectivity for 320 rural locations as well as a disaster recovery site in Chiclayo. The contract is for three years and is valued at $9.6 million.

Banco de la Nación has been a Gilat customer for over 10 years. In this new project, Gilat's SkyEdge II solution, featuring the innovative WebEnhance VSAT, will be used to bring broadband connectivity to the bank's many branches. Based on Gilat's innovative CacheMode technology, WebEnhance enables a better user experience with accelerated web browsing.

Gilat will provide satellite connectivity to outlying areas, connecting remote offices with enterprise applications and allowing mobile and remote banking branches to extend ATM and online banking access to customers.

"In Peru's expanding economy, a broader access to financial services is critical for sustainable growth. The bandwidth efficiency of Gilat's SkyEdge platform coupled with the platform's ability to sustain high-speed connectivity make it an ideal solution to expand broadband connectivity to remote bank locations, supporting the bank's commitment to improve social inclusion of financial services," said Luis Saavedra Zegarra, Head of Information Systems at Banco de la Nación.

As part of the contract, Gilat will also deploy a disaster recovery site in the northern city of Chiclayo providing satellite backup to the Bank's data center located in Lima. Satellite backup is used to provide full broadband connectivity, allowing mission critical operations to continue unharmed during emergency outages when terrestrial systems fail.

"Satellite communications is essential for banks as they work to improve customer access to the sector's growing range of financial services. We are happy to continue working with Banco de la Nación in supporting such an important national initiative," said Danny Fridman, CEO of Gilat Colombia and Peru.