Satellite Communications for Financial Institutions in Africa - SatFinAfrica

Paper number

IAC-12,B5,1,7,x13455

Author

Dr. Fulvio Sansone, SatADSL, Belgium

Coauthor

Mr. Thierry Eltges, Sea&Space Exploration, Belgium

Coauthor

Mr. Davide Tomassini, ESA/ESTEC, The Netherlands

Coauthor

Mr. Antonio Bove, SES, Luxemburg

Coauthor

Mr. Ralf Kierspel, SES, Luxemburg

Coauthor

Mr. Francisco Cabanas, SES, Luxemburg

Coauthor

Mr. Geert Adams, Newtec, Belgium

Year

2012

Abstract

SatFinAfrica is a pilot project co-funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), led by Sea&Space Exploration (B) with SES (L) and Newtec (B) to address corporate financial services in Africa. To achieve this objective, the SES/Newtec Sat3Play platform, which has been originally designed to address only the consumer market, will be enhanced through a set of new features.

The target market is mainly identified in the remote branches of large organizations, in particular financial institutions, which have a critical need for a secure service with low latency and adequate QoS at acceptable costs. Not covered by terrestrial communications means, most of these remote branches are generally not large enough to justify the investments associated to classic corporate VSAT systems. 

Three main typologies of corporate services are targeted by SatFinAfrica: Money Transfer, Automatic Telling Machines (ATM)  and several kinds of Virtual Private Networks (VPN). 

Besides, a Customer Management Tool (CMT) has been developed in order to allow local distributors to manage on-line their own base of subscribers (e.g. to monitor network traffic/performances and Fair Usage Policy thresholds). In this way, the level of support required by the service provider “SatADSL” (the organization in charge of providing consumer and corporate services in West Africa over the Sat3Play platform) will be minimized.

Financial institutions are generally very conservative and therefore reluctant to commit to any operational deployment and service subscription until they get a satisfactory demonstration in the field. Hence the need for a successful pilot stage with selected African customers in the frame of the project activities, which is an integral part of the SatFinAfrica project. 

The paper presents the main findings of the work carried out to meet the requirements of the above typologies of corporate services and provides an updated snapshot about the pilot outcomes (including characteristics, types and volume of traffic handled in the portfolio of services for the involved Financial Institutions).

Abstract document

IAC-12,B5,1,7,x13455.brief.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-12,B5,1,7,x13455.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

To get the manuscript, please contact IAF Secretariat.