Satellite extends Nashua’s reach
Cellphone distributor Nashua Mobile is adding satellite bandwidth to its repertoire so customers can make voice calls and transmit data at high speeds from remote areas of Africa not covered by cellular networks.
Nashua will buy its satellite airtime from Johannesburg-based Evosat, which bulk-buys bandwidth on the Inmarsat constellation.
The offering should appeal to companies with staff who travel to remote regions but still need fast and reliable data transfers, said Evosat MD Harry Tayler.
The deal with Nashua promises to generate so much business for Inmarsat that it has slashed the cost of a call almost 20% and almost halved its data fees.
It will now cost about R6 a minute for a voice call from anywhere in Africa to anywhere in the world, and R25 to transmit 1MB of data. That made Evosat the world’s cheapest supplier of Inmarsat bandwidth, Tayler said.
Inmarsat agreed to drop its fees when Evosat argued that Africa had numerous potential customers for communications services, but not at the notoriously high prices that satellite providers usually charge.
“Because of Nashua’s scale we have managed to negotiate some really aggressive airtime rates.”
Transferring data via a satellite handset was slow and not always possible until Inmarsat spent $1,6 billion on new satellites last year, said Tayler, and Nashua Mobile would be the first company in Africa to offer that service.
The deal made it possible to run a virtual office anywhere, no matter how poor the infrastructure was, said Nashua Mobile MD Mark Taylor.
Users will be able to access their corporate data, the Internet and e-mail, hold a video conference and make voice calls at the same time as transmitting data.
Evosat’s annual revenue of $10 million was already growing 25% a year, and the deal with Nashua had the potential to raise that another 10%, Tayler said.
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