Leading satellite communications company Newtec is working with Congolese service provider Microcom to extend its network capacity

Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), 24 May 2011 - Newtec has installed equipment that will allow Congolese service provider Microcom to extend the range of service potential for existing clients and potentially include the whole of Central and Western Africa in its network.   

Microcom, which is the leading ISP in the DRC, has upgraded its network to add two new Newtec Elevation hubs in Fuchsstadt, Germany on Intelsat's IS 10-02, and in Mountainside, the USA on IS 25, to service remote stations and WiMax networks.

One of the most important criteria for Microcom is to maintain the highest available throughput whilst keeping expensive leased space capacity as low as possible. Laurent NTUMBA, Responsable Microcom Kinshasa, is expecting that the deployment of the Newtec technology will make it possible to heavily reduce the operational expense of  the satellite capacity and make life better for DRC citizens.

"We are looking to satellite technology to solve the capacity problem. We have great relationship with specialists in the industry and Newtec came recommended as the expert in its field," NTUMBA said. "However, the price of satellite capacity is very high, particularly in the DRC where there is very limited competition from copper or fibre infrastructure."

Newtec's Elevation hubs were selected as they perform modulation and demodulation, as well as state-of-the-art traffic enhancement, compression and protection capabilities for IP services. They also facilitate a number of advanced multilevel IP traffic policing and real time shaping functionalities with a DVB-S2 IP encapsulator, and a DVB-S2 modulation parameter controller.

The Elevation family of products implement Constant Coding and Modulation (CCM), Variable Coding and Modulation (VCM) and FlexACM® Adaptive Coding and Modulation (ACM) in the forward link of satellite star service applications. FlexACM is Newtec's unique and market proven end-to-end solution combining a range of cutting edge technologies to optimise IP satellite links in the most efficient way to reduce OPEX costs and to increase business profitability.

Serge Van Herck, CEO of Newtec, explained how this is beneficial to Microcom.

"Our Elevation product capabilities overcome excessive loading of the satellite channel with re-transmits due to loss of packets and particularly improve the performance of Microcom‘s WiMax network, greatly enhancing the end-user experience," Van Herck said.

For further information about Newtec visit www.newtec.eu or the Newtec booth 5A at SatCom Africa show in Johannesburg, South Africa, 30 May - 2 June 2011.