Subic Bay (Philippines)
Kacific has selected ABS to supply ground infrastructure amid plans to launch a Kacific1 satellite later in the year in the Philippines.
Terms of the agreement will see ABS’ teleport in Subic Bay, the Philippines, “host, operate and provide” first-level support for Kacific’s gateway hub.
Kacific1 is set to deploy high throughput satellite (HTS) to be located over Asia Pacific using Ka-band spot beams, designed to provide “cost-efficient” broadband delivery.
Specifically, 56 high throughput beams will cover select areas over the Pacific Islands and Southeast Asia, with six beams covering the Philippine archipelago and a further 21 beams across Indonesia, Timor-Leste and Malaysia.
“Kacific chose to locate its ground infrastructure in the Philippines because it is a priority market for us,” said Christian Patouraux, CEO of Kacific. “Our beams will reach 100 percent of the nation’s population across its many islands, making affordable connectivity available to all those who are currently unserved or underserved.
“ABS is an ideal partner as they have a proven track record and, like us, have also made a commitment to the Philippines.”
ABS’s primary space operations centre for its entire fleet of six satellites is located in Subic Bay, with teleport facilities operating at “extremely high availability”, with triple redundant power supply and fibre connectivity to tier-1 IP international peering points.
Aligning with Ka-band operating norms for tropical regions, Patouraux said ABS has also arranged a diversity site to be located nearby at the Clark Freeport Zone.
“The teleports will operate on an active diversity basis using state-of-the-art connectivity via a dedicated fibre route to directly optically connect the two gateway hubs,” a company statement read.
“This ensures that commercial traffic would have a reliable transmission from one of the sites if, for example, rain degradation was impairing the functionality of the other.”
Currently, ABS’ Philippines serves as one of the major satellite hubs over Asia Pacific, hosting more than 50 antennas.
“As satellites provide a complementary role to 5G connectivity, the Subic facility is poised to be a gateway for future 5G services especially to remote areas,” a company statement added. “The facility is managed by professional personnel and experienced engineers providing round-the-clock services, 24 x 7 customer support and a dedicated customer program management team.”
