We keep getting asked if VSAT is dying, what with all the fibre that is being laid down across South Africa. The truth is, it's not. If you can get fibre between the sites you need to link up, then use it - no brainer, but we're never going to see the kind of fibre coverage you get in other parts of the world. Networks with mixed technologies is the way to go.

VSAT has a niche, which will remain, and there are a number of reasons why one should consider using it. Here are a few:

It is really fast to deploy.
We can have your site up and running within 12 hours if we have the VSAT terminal equipment in stock.

It is ubiquitous.
There are very few places in Africa which are not covered by one VSAT satellite or another - chances are we can deploy as much bandwidth as you need to your door.

It is flexible.
If the usage at your sites tends to vary, or you need to boost one site for a short time, we can quickly and easily reconfigure the bandwidth allocated or place the sites in a pool and allow the capacity to automatically shift to where the demand is. Placing sites in a pool of bandwidth enables very economical usage of your capacity.

It is robust.
There is a good reason Disaster Management services use Umoya Networks' VSAT. If you need to plan for worst case scenario, or just have a rock-solid fail-over link in place, you can't beat VSAT.

It can be mobile.
If you need to be following an event (cycling, canoeing, etc) that moves daily, your VSAT dish can go with you.

It might just be cheaper.
Yes, I see that raised eyebrow! If you have more than about 15 sites you are linking up, particularly in a hub-and-spoke design network, VSAT can work out cheaper than terrestrial leased lines. Due to bandwidth pooling capabilities and ease of management one gains both on operational cost savings as well as efficient use of bandwidth. In fact more than one large chain of retail outlets in the US, numbering thousands of sites, has moved away from using terrestrial connectivity (fibre and copper leased lines) due to the complexity and down-time issues related to faults and managing thousands of leased lines. It has proved more cost effective and easier to manage via VSAT and their availability has improved.

VoIP works well on VSAT.
The fact that VSAT has inherent latency of ~500ms has some people thinking VoIP can't work over VSAT. VoIP technology takes VSAT latency in its stride; it is packet loss that kills VoIP. Umoya runs good quality VoIP over VSAT, as do many network operators. Many African GSM operators use VSAT as backhaul. The key to voice quality over a VSAT network is good Quality of Service management. Umoya manages their VSAT networks from end to end so there are no black holes where traffic is not managed, thus we are able to ensure that your voice packets get priority through the network from end to end.

If you think of another positive aspect of VSAT we've left out, please let us know!

regards,
Dave Gale
(Dave is Director of BusDev at Umoya)