Among the most active sectors were enterprises such as financial institutions, oil & gas, transportation, and corporate environments, and we view these as exciting markets. During 2009, we also supplied solutions to players in the international defense industry including military and domestic security institutions.
This year, we continued to see a need for inclusive or integrated projects, one that has enabled us to prepare and package turnkey projects around the world. Rather than adding expertise or technical equipment, we are now more often being called upon, and fulfill, complete ventures integrating our VSAT technologies with other various components to create full-solutions meeting a wider range of functions.
The major projects we are delivering this year continued to be based on our SkyEdge II platform, a multi-service platform enabling the delivery of high-quality voice, broadband data and video services for diverse environments. SkyEdge II is a standards-based system using DVB-S2 and DVB-RCS. With better efficiencies and full adaptivity for both inbound and outbound channels, it provides higher performance that serves the growing requirements of end-users.
We also introduced NetEdge, a new, high-performance satellite communications platform specifically designed to meet the requirements of multi-star private networks for corporations and for cellular backhaul applications. As a dedicated solution for multi-star networks, NetEdge addresses two common challenges; the lack of a terrestrial connection between corporate headquarters and satellite hubs and the need for single-hop connectivity between offices as well as single hop connectivity to the Internet. This new product creates new revenue opportunities for service providers by extending satellite-based services to private customers and multi-tier corporations.
During the past year, we closed and implemented a number of exciting projects, especially in the Latin and Central American markets. For children and educators, our satellite-based communications expertise is laying the framework for improved education across several countries including Brazil, Argentina, and Panama. There we are enabling the creation of new and improved educational opportunities with broadband Internet communications. We believe that our projects are helping bridge the digital divide and providing new hope to those nations’ educational systems.
We also forged more inroads into the Americas during the year, with deals in Brazil and Peru as well as updating our agreements with the Colombian government. In Brazil, we are supplying a secure enterprise solution for broadband communications to more than 1,000 Sicredi bank branches around the country. In Peru, the country’s national bank, Banco de la Nación and other enterprise customers, are benefiting from enhanced voice and data networking services from our solutions. This includes high-speed connectivity for high throughput for file transfer, transactional service applications such as ATMs and voice quality IP telephony.
In the second half of the year, we announced more deals in Asia and the Pacific confirming the need for our solutions among governments, enterprises and industries in these regions.
From the Pacific’s Papua New Guinea to Asia’s mainland in China, to Thailand in the South East, through Central Asia’s Kazakhstan, we implemented a wide range of projects to bring broadband Internet and satellite-based telephony to citizens in this wide region.
In Papua New Guinea, we are providing a broadband satellite communications network covering hundreds of sites. We are enabling the local telecom supplier, Telikom PNG to provide telephony and deliver broadband Internet services to remote areas as well as serving the financial services sector’s interactive data communications requirements. In Thailand, Gilat is supplying a full VSAT turnkey solution for rural telephony and broadband Internet services. Both of these projects, covering hundred of sites, are creating new opportunities for local residents and empowering their communications.
China’s Xianjiang region in the country’s northwest received a big step forward with a cellular backhaul solution to enhance GSM mobile connectivity, especially in regions where until now it had not been economically feasible. Gilat’s systems are enabling China Unicom to provide high quality mobile voice and data services similar to those already offered in China’s developed and urban areas.
In Central Asia’s Kazakhstan, we implemented two very different deals that both go far in enhancing the penetration of satellite-based communications throughout the area. We completed an exciting implementation of satellite broadband Internet for Kazakhstan’s national railroad by creating a full VSAT-based solution to bring broadband Internet to its passengers on its Almaty-Astana route, some 1,300 km long. We also integrated our cellular backhaul solutions to enhance mobile connectivity in some of Kazakhstan’s most remote regions where harsh weather is the norm.