Gilat Satcom has confirmed a partnership with Nigerian ICT services provider Total IT Solutions to provide voice and high-speed data services to rural villages in several states including Adamawa, Borno, Kano, Katsina, Oyo and Yobe.

The company will use its Village Island service system to roll out the services, effectively providing villages with a full communications package that includes VSAT infrastructure, Wi-Fi routers, solar-power, two communal tablets per village and service management.

The service will include satellite connectivity to VSAT infrastructure in order to enable localised Wi-Fi connectivity for data and VoIP to communal tablets and devices.

Total IT Solutions will focus on the roll out of community hub networks, or purpose-built communications blocks, and has selected Gilat Satcom's Village Island solution as the infrastructure and service platform of choice.

The community hub networks are being rolled out on behalf of Nigeria's Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF), established to facilitate the extension of ICT and network services to rural, unserved and under-served areas of the country.

Muhammad Yahya Sanda, CEO of Total IT Solutions said: "The 10 village networks already exceed my expectations – and, most importantly, the expectations of the villagers. We all have friends and family in rural areas and now they are connected to us and to education, medical services, commerce and so much more."

Sanda added that Gilat Satcom's Village Island is an extremely well-designed, self-contained system and key to the success of this project. According to him, the Village Island makes it possible to build low-cost networks which can easily scale with demand.

Eran Yoran, CMO and Head of Business Development at Gilat Satcom, said providing affordable access in rural Africa is an ongoing theme for the telecoms industry. "We have worked for a long time to provide a solution which is both affordable for the village end-user and profitable for the entire supply chain."