Rural comms startup Indigo Telecom names SkyMesh as wholesale partner

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 04 November 2010 10:14

IT Industry - Deals

Indigo Telecom, the company set up earlier this year to focus on providing satellite communications services to rural Australia, has named SkyMesh has its wholesale partner, but is still to name its long-waited, supposedly ubiquitous, retailing partner.

Indigo Telecom launched in July selling mobile voice and data services on a Thuraya geostationary satellite and claiming it would exploit a huge untapped market for the delivery of portable satellite phone and data communications services to rural Australians beyond the reach of terrestrial cellular networks.

CEO David Ruddiman told iTWire at the company's launch: "There are almost 5.5 million square kilometres of the country and more than 617,000 people [of working age] in regional, remote and very remote Australia without adequate access to reliable terrestrial mobile network coverage."

SkyMesh - which claims to be the largest provider of satellite broadband services under the Australian Government's Australian Broadband Guarantee programme - will act as a wholesale partner for Indigo to resell its suite of satellite voice and data services

Ruddiman said: "The partnership will allow SkyMesh to provide both broadband and mobility products to 100 percent of Australia's landmass allowing customers in rural and regional areas the luxury of services more commonly associated with metropolitan areas.

"SkyMesh will be selling Indigo's XT satellite handset, which is the toughest satellite handset in the world, and the SG 2520 - a dual mode handset which uses both traditional GSM and satellite networks. SkyMesh will also offer a durable and portable IP data terminal, providing broadband Internet access in the most isolated areas of Australia."

SkyMesh director, Paul Rees, said: "SkyMesh currently provides more than 30,000 customers with secure, high speed broadband Internet in areas where traditional ADSL broadband is unavailable or other technology limitations make traditional broadband prohibitively expensive."

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