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Mr Daniel S. Goldberg, CEO, New Skies Satellite, with Mr Siddhartha Ray, Managing Director, Data Access, at a press conference in the Capital on Thursday.

NEW DELHI, Oct. 3

GLOBAL satellite communications company New Skies Satellite (NSS) and international long-distance operator Data Access (India) Pvt Ltd have signed a $100-million contract for capacity on two of its satellites — NSS 6, scheduled to be launched by end-November this year and NSS-703, which operates in the Indian Ocean region.

Announcing this at a press conference, Mr Daniel S. Goldberg, CEO, NSS, stated that the agreement would provide Data Access with multiple high-powered transponders on NSS-6 satellite for a 10-year period and on existing NSS-703 satellite primarily for the transmission of international voice traffic between India and the Middle East, North East Asia, South East Asia, Australia and Europe.

"NSS-6, with the best inter-regional connectivity in the industry and high-power performance, is ideally-suited for voice, data, and video transmissions in and among the Middle East, India, North and Southeast Asia, China and Australia. In short, it is an ideal vehicle for Data Access' dynamic business,'' Mr Goldberg stated.

He noted that NSS-6 would offer high-powered Ku- and Ka-band services to more than 60 per cent of the world's population with its six interconnected beams covering India, China, Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, the Middle East and South Africa. A number of technical features on the satellite, such as built-in flexibility for dynamic allocation of capacity among the coverage regions, make it ideally suited to offer first class connectivity for Asian carriers, broadcasters and Internet service providers.

``With the Government liberalising the international voice market by issuing three new licenses to offer international long distance voice and data carrier service on April 1 this year, the market for these services is expected to grow exponentially. With NSS-6 offering high-power broadband connectivity throughout India as well as the entire region, it will serve as a major catalyst for this growth,'' he said.

Mr Goldberg said NSS was also talking to other ILD operators including Reliance for capacity. Speaking on the occasion, Mr Siddhartha Ray, Managing Director, Data Access, stated that it would allow the company to improve the performance of its networks by giving greater flexibility in the management of traffic between various voice gateways in Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

"Our selection of NSS-6 will give us a real competitive advantage in the market. With our voice and data business currently growing at a rapid pace, we needed to procure a large amount of bandwidth that can be flexibly deployed without sacrificing our high standards for Quality of Service,'' he stated.

Mr Ray noted that since the rollout of its ILD operations on July 24, the company is already carrying over two million minutes of voice traffic to India everyday through its interconnect with more than 65 leading tier-1 and tier-2 carriers throughout the world.

The international data carrier business of Data Access already services over 60 per cent of the Internet capacity of India by deploying over 300 mbps of data circuits, he noted.

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