Inmarsat has successfully launched its second Inmarsat-4 satellite, one of the largest and most sophisticated commercial satellites ever put into orbit. The satellite was launched from the Sea Launch platform at an equatorial location in the Pacific Ocean. It is the second in a planned two-satellite constellation, representing an eight-year development and $1.5 billion investment from Inmarsat, which will support the company’s existing and next-generation broadband services.
The satellite has now been acquired by Inmarsat’s ground station at Lake Cowichan in Canada. The successful launch demonstrates Inmarsat’s commitment to defining the communication networks of tomorrow and strengthens the company’s position as a true technological pioneer.
The Zenit-3SL rocket used in the launch is one of the few systems capable of lifting the I-4 satellite — the size of a London double-decker bus and weighing six tons — into geostationary transfer orbit. The I-4, along with its sister craft launched earlier in the year, enables Inmarsat’s vision of delivering broadband connectivity almost anywhere in the world, providing coverage for over 85 percent of the world’s landmass — including the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, most of Asia Pacific, and Western Australia — covering 98 percent of the world’s population.
“The successful launch of the second I-4 satellite means that Inmarsat now has the world’s most sophisticated commercial network for mobile voice and data services,” said Andrew Sukawaty, CEO and chairman of Inmarsat. “It will support an unprecedented evolution of our services — more than doubling the bandwidth available to our mobile users. It marks the beginning of a new era for Inmarsat, in which we expect to roll out a new range of global mobile services to government, aid, and enterprise users.”
Samer Halawi, regional director, Inmarsat, Middle East, Africa and Central Asia, added: “The launch of the second I-4 is a high point for our customers in the Middle East and Africa. With the service available to them today in this region, they can also use it in the Americas by mid-2006, empowering them with virtually global coverage.”
Nortel’s Middle East Road Show
Nortel Networks Middle East has kicked off a regionwide road show, “Transforming the LAN,” which highlights importance of advanced local area networks (LAN) for enterprise convergence. Visiting major cities in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the two-day road show will gather channel partners and IT managers from some of Nortel’s key enterprise customers to brief them on the future of business-driven networking. The event is also scheduled to visit Riyadh and Jeddah on Nov. 28 and Nov. 30 respectively.
The event will present sessions on network investments and how to build solid and advanced networks with a special focus on security and traffic management. Nortel will also present some case studies on major European customers who have adopted Nortel’s IP technologies to improve their business processes. For more information on the Nortel road show click to: http://www.nortel.com/corporate/events/2005b/transformingthelan/index.html.
Yahoo Riding High in ME
According to statistics from Yahoo, Internet users showed no signs of reducing their browsing habits during Ramadan. In Saudi Arabia, 1,330,000 users viewed 230 million pages of Yahoo during the month — with a little over seven million pages seen daily.
“However, with one of the largest populations in the region, Internet usage in the Kingdom still has some ways to go, especially if one compares it to the UAE and Egypt,” said Dr. Irfan Ahmad, director, Yahoo Ad Sales Rep, Middle East. “STC is making some of the right moves and there has been a perceptible increase in users. In April 2005 we had 1,081,000 users in KSA and in six months this has grown by 23 percent. But in October 2001 Saudi Arabia had more Yahoo users than the UAE with 666,000 compared with 476,000 for the UAE. The male/female ratio in KSA is 81.5 percent/18.5 percent for all users of Yahoo but for users Under-25, the ratio is 70:30. The Net isn’t going to remain a male domain for long.”
Yahoo ’s October 2005 statistics show that more than 1.5 million unique visitors in the UAE viewed an average of almost 10 million pages every day of Yahoo. This placed the UAE as the country with the second highest Internet users — after Egypt which has over 3.4 million Yahoo users. The UAE is also doing better than the Kingdom in the number of female Internet users. In the UAE, among the Under-21 age group, almost 38 percent of the users are female.
Ahmad pointed out that the Internet is not a fringe medium any more. Yahoo has found that in the Middle East, advertisers and agencies have begun to incorporate online advertising into their media mix and those agencies which have yet to accept this medium will be seriously looking at it in 2006.
“This year online advertising in the Middle East has already increased by more than 30 percent and we have seven weeks left of the year. An increasing number of advertisers are targeting Yahoo ’s female audience,” said Ahmad. “Banners on Yahoo with Arabic text in them tend to generate 50 percent higher click-through rates in Saudi Arabia compared with similar English language banners — which shows that a large Arab audience is online — and the Internet, particularly Yahoo, is not just being used by expats.”
EastNets to Highlight SWIFT Solutions
EastNets is organizing a workshop on Nov. 22 at Shangri-La Hotel, Dubai, with the aim to bring SWIFT to the capital markets in the region. The event, to be held in coordination with SWIFT, an EastNets partner, will also see the introduction of a series of SWIFTNet solutions for the securities industry.
The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is the financial industry-owned cooperative supplying secure, standardized messaging services and interface software to 7,650 financial institutions in over 200 countries. SWIFT’s worldwide community includes banks, broker/dealers and investment managers, as well as their market infrastructures in payments, securities, treasury and trade.
The main focus of the workshop will be on issues pertaining to Straight-Through Processing (STP) enablement of the regional markets, integration of the region with the growth of the capital markets and the required outcome of an increase in liquidity, efficiency and transparency, which form the core for sustained growth of the capital markets and the securities industry.