Thaicom, Thailand’s biggest commercial satellite communications provider, and We Are IT Philippines Incorporated (WIT), announced in Manila on 3 May 2018 that WIT will lease the entire capacity on Thaicom’s IPSTAR satellite to provide broadband Internet coverage across the Philippines.
The agreement is a multi-year capacity wholesale agreement that involves the use of spot and broadcast beams from IPSTAR to the Philippines as part of a nationwide rollout of enterprise and government satellite-based broadband.
The 3 May 2018 agreement also allows WIT to use the IPSTAR high-throughput satellite (HTS) to provide broadcasting, telecommunications, maritime connectivity, and mobile telephone operations throughout the Philippines.
“I thank WIT for their continued trust in us. The Philippines is the perfect satellite market, due to the wide geographical and population distribution of the archipelago. I am pleased that Thaicom is able to help the Philippines in its transformation for the digital era. IPSTAR’s high-throughput capacity is ideal to connect unserved and underserved areas in the Philippines, thus improving the lives of millions of Filipinos and accelerating the country’s economic growth,” said Anant Kaewruamvongs, Chief Executive Officer of Thaicom.
“Demand for affordable, fast and unlimited satellite broadband connectivity is expected to grow in the Philippines’ enterprise, government, education and consumer sectors”, said Joseph Maddatu, Chief Executive Officer of We Are IT (WIT) Philippines. “Our partnership of more than 10 years with Thaicom continues to support our vision of cost effective satellite capacity for the country. We will be able to roll out the network infrastructure for the country’s 3rd mobile network operator, as well as government and enterprise broadband VSAT projects faster and more cost effectively as the result of the agreement with Thaicom. Furthermore, we can support the government’s free Wi-Fi broadband initiative that brings high speed connectivity to the rural areas and more importantly, support mobile network operators with backhaul services in their effort to expand their coverage and increase data capacity to their cellular sites. This initiative is in line with our objective to drive our top line exponentially and put WIT at par or even bigger than some of its listed peers in the Philippines.”
“We take pride in our ability to drive the common goal of connecting individuals, businesses and governments across ASEAN with affordable and reliable broadband services,” said Patompob ‘Nile’ Suwansiri, Chief Commercial Officer at Thaicom. “WIT has been a long term partner of Thaicom for over a decade and this latest agreement solidifies this strong partnership by taking it to another level. With WIT, the Philippines now has access to 1.5 Gbps of capacity throughout the country.”
