In tandem with Eutelsat’s pan-European roll out of high-speed services, Irish satellite broadband firm Satellite Broadband Ireland has rebranded as Onwave and will in the coming weeks increase broadband speeds to 10Mbps and introduce new phone and TV services.

Onwave will focus on a core target market of 210,843 home and business internet users in Ireland who currently connect to the internet at speeds less than 2Mbps, including 54,718 who are still on narrowband or dial-up connections.

Users will receive a number of choices depending on their usages. A standard 6Mbps broadband, TV and home phone package costs from €22.49 and a 6Mb broadband-only service starts at €17.49, rising to €37.49 for 10Mbps as part of an introductory offer for a three-month period.

“The benefits will also spread to rural businesses, who will be able to compete on an equal footing with their urban counterparts, helping to spread employment and opportunities nationwide,” said Kevin Ryan, chief executive, Onwave.

The services coincided with European communications giant Eutelsat unveiling this week its new pan-European, high-speed broadband network, which will deliver cost-efficient broadband to the remotest regions of Europe and of Ireland.

The deployment includes delivery on a promise of a new €7m ground station at Elfordstown, Co Cork.

Laurent Paul of Eutelsat explained that the latest developments in satellite technology KA-SAT will mean capacity to support up to 1m users across Europe with competitive broadband services.

“This is the most powerful satellite coverage between Europe and the Mediterranean,” Paul said.

What this means for Irish consumers, Ryan said, would be guaranteed broadband services starting at 6Mbps download with a 1Mbps upload.

He hinted at a future professional service with 40Mbps and 20Mbps download speeds.
Triple-play TV

Ryan said the new TV offers will include free sat TV with 150 channels, including the Saorview channels, and competitively priced phone services.

“This means that Ireland will now get a truly universal guaranteed triple-play offer across 100pc of the country, unlike certain services that reach just 40pc of the country,” Ryan said.
source: www.siliconrepublic.com

June 05, 2011 - In America, there's HughesNet. It's usually a last-resort for people seeking high-speed internet, mostly for two reasons. For one, it's crazy expensive. Two, it's really slow, at least on the uplink.

But satellite-based internet is still useful in rural places where no other broadband is available, and evidently those same demands are also present in Europe. Eutelsat has just launched satellite internet across Europe, and it's being called the most powerful satellite in the entire world. It just went into service this week, giving broadband speeds to over a million homes in Europe that are currently doing without.

The KA-SAT was launched at the end of 2010, and just now went into service. It's set to provide consumers up to 10Mb/sec download and 4Mb/sec upload rates, and it will also provide an enterprise service of up to 50Mb/sec. Based on reports, there are 13 million homes across Europe that are "too remote" to get normal high-speed internet, and there's another 17 million that cannot get services greater than 2Mb/sec.

The E.U. is currently trying to give broadband access to every citizen by 2013, and launching a satellite like this definitely moves them in the right direction.

It cost around 350 million Euros to get it online, and there's no plans now to launch a second. We're still waiting to hear how much this service will cost on a per-home basis, but for those who have had no internet at all, anything reasonable will likely be seen as acceptable. One step closer to global 'net access -- we'll take it!
source: hothardware.com