Experience

Our experience demonstrates our capacity to assume total communications operations for rural areas. Below are a few of our implementations, listed within the markets that we serve.

Spacenet Rural Communications began operations in Peru in 1998, with our first rural telephony project, called “Frontera Norte”, for FITEL, of approximately 200 sites. Since then, we have participated in and have won, either wholly or partially, almost every rural communications project launched by the Peruvian government. We operate almost 6,000 telephony sites in Peru, approximately 600 of which also have Internet connectivity.

Our services benefit over 5.8 million people in Peru, and the wide acceptance by users is reflected in the evolution of the traffic, coverage and extension of services.

In Colombia, Spacenet Rural Communications achieved a milestone in 2000, when we were granted contracts for the deployment, implementation and operation of the world's largest rural telecommunications project, Compartel I. The services for those rural sites include telephony, internet, data, fax and other services. Since then, we have been awarded additional Compartel projects.

Spacenet Rural Communications operates a network of almost 10,000 rural Columbian sites, serving over seven million people.

Spacenet Rural Communications also works with governments to assist with national elections. We supervise, manage and support installations, as well as manage and support hub operations during elections.

We have also established an independent communications system for the transmission of voting data. The turnkey solution allows for logistics handling, rapid installation in remote locations, and operation that ensures a secure and immediate connection to Election Board headquarters.

Cable & Wireless in Panama and Telefonica Data in Colombia are examples of operators with whom we work.

Cable & Wireless was mandated by the government of Panama to provide universal services. Providing those services in remote areas can be a challenge and, thus, they found the need to outsource the project to a rural telecom service provider. We provided an outsourcing operation using a ‘‘Build-Operate-Transfer’’ model. We installed the required network, provided the operations management and transferred the final system to the customer.

In addition, since 2004, Spacenet Rural Communications has provided Hub and NOC services to Telefonica Data in Colombia for data-transmission to 430 sites. The service includes VSAT equipment, satellite segment usage, permanent network operations and remote technical support.

Spacenet Rural Communications also provides connectivity to the private sector, from small to large businesses.

For instance, Spacenet Rural Communications supports over 100 branches of Banco de la Nación, Peru's nationwide bank. We provide the banks with voice and data services, including Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) support.