The arrival of innovation in the satellite technology space will continue to deliver significant value to trade and commerce...

This is the view of management at Q-KON, an established specialist service provider focusing on providing ready to use communication solutions and managed network services for the African market.

Q-KON remains ahead of technology trends and best practices by adopting innovative solutions to improve communication needs. "Our influence and achievements to date are due to our long-term partnerships with leading solution manufacturers and respected customers across Africa," says Dr Dawie de Wet, CEO of Q-KON.

Are all satellites created alike?

As a communication technology, satellite networks are powerful, flexible and very diverse. Because of its "over-the-air" nature plus the advances in recent technologies, satellite networks have become much more flexible, cost effective and dynamic solutions than fibre or copper cable networks.

"As a reference to this point, consider that cabled networks are fundamentally fixed point-to-point installations often from a central point to multiple customer sites. The flexibility offered by this type of fixed point-to-point network can simply not be compared with the dynamic and flexible nature offered by satellite networks," Dr de Wet continues.

From this flexibility and dynamic nature of satellite technologies follows the additional benefit that different satellite networks can be designed for completely different user requirements. In this way satellite technology can similarly be used to provide consumer grade broadband services or high availability mission critical connections for remote oil and gas operations. As the technology evolves and the applications thereof grows, it becomes increasingly important that user groups appreciate this dynamic power of satellite networks and differentiate between different satellite networks for different user requirements.

Customised Private Networks

"One market sector which has seen significant growth is the deployment of custom-built satellite networks which are designed, implemented and operated to address very specific customer needs," he adds.

Customer needs such as mitigation of unexpected power losses to branch offices, interim communication to a sales office in a new territory or mission critical communication to a network of remote monitoring points are all specific applications that can be resolved efficiently and cost effectively using satellite networks.

For these types of requirements it is more effective to develop networks that address the customer's specific requirements than providing service from a generic satellite access network. This customisation can mostly be achieved by leveraging the technical advantages linked with Q-KON's system engineering skills and capabilities to develop a user specific network.

"Because these networks are implemented using proven technologies and secure satellite services it can offer both the reliability and cost points required by the business; which results in a "best of both" worlds scenario," says Dr de Wet.

When is a Private VSAT Network better?

A private VSAT Network is an ideal solution for a customer who needs reliable anywhere and anytime communication from multiple remotes sites to a central core network. This could be a banking network to provide connectivity to large numbers of branch, ATM and POS sites, or a mining network that requires high capacity links between a couple of remote operations in a mining region. Private satellite networks operate independent from any other local telco infrastructure (no integration between ADSL, 3G or wireless) which makes these networks elegant and effective to operate. Q-KON takes control of the operation, support and maintenance – this makes the process seamless and much more effective because there are no 3rd parties to blame when something goes wrong.

"By integrating the power of today's satellite technologies with customer demands through an structured system engineering process we are able to both enable business growth for our customers as well as wider adoption of satellite technology within the Africa landscape," Dr de Wet concludes.