May 15th 2012: Eutelsat Communications, (Euronext Paris: ETL) Europe's leading satellite operator, has announced its Skylogic subsidiary has signed a distribution agreement with Direct Connect to sell its revolutionary Tooway™ satellite broadband service in Norway from May 15th 2012.

Under the agreement, ISP Direct Connect will be offering the Tooway™ consumer satellite broadband service with speeds of up to 10 Mbps to the most rural areas of Norway, via Eutelsat’s ground-breaking KA-SAT High Throughput satellite. The service will complement Direct Connect’s already strong reputation for providing radiowave broadband to rural communities.

Jan-Tore Dannemark, Direct Connect CEO, said: “The ability to offer Tooway™ satellite broadband is an exciting opportunity to provide high-speed services to the rural communities of Norway, which we have to date been unable to serve by traditional line-of-sight technologies such as radio wave.”

The Tooway™ solution consists of a small satellite dish and a modem connected to the PC via Ethernet, giving customers Internet access without the need for a telephone line. The service is also triple play-ready, allowing distributors to offer additional TV and IP telephony services using the same equipment.
 
“We believe high speed satellite broadband is an essential solution in achieving an all-inclusive digital environment for Europe and we are delighted to be working with Direct Connect in Norway to assist in this goal,” said Dr Achille De Tommaso, Skylogic CEO.

Tooway™ is delivered by Eutelsat’s KA-SAT High Throughput Satellite, which entered commercial service in May 2011. With its total capacity of more than 70 Gbps, KA-SAT ushers in a new era of competitively-priced, satellite-delivered services for broadcasters, businesses and consumers. The satellite forms the cornerstone of a new satellite infrastructure, which includes eight main satellite gateways across Europe connected to the Internet by a fibre backbone ring.