O3b Networks is bringing broadband access to The Republic of Kiribati, which has a population of about 100,000 spread over 33 atolls and islands across 3.5 million square km of the Pacific.
The service will be provided to consumers, businesses and government customers by Amalgamated Telecom Holdings (Kiribati) Limited (ATHKL), a subsidiary of Amalgamated Telecom Holdings of Fiji.
Kiribati is in the final stages of testing the O3b link, and will first deploy the service to Tarawa, the largest island in the country. The multi-year agreement provides flexibility to expand capacity where required, ensuring ATHKL can provide high-performance connectivity for HD video, e-commerce, online education, or cloud services.
O3b’s Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites orbit at 8,062km above the Earth and have a latency of less than 150 msec—25% that of the geostationary (GEO) satellite systems connecting Kiribati. The switch to the lower-latency, higher-throughput O3b service will transform the island nation providing connectivity equivalent to long-haul fiber, while avoiding the exorbitant cost of laying an undersea cable to the island.
