Founded in 2003, Pactel International provides high-grade communications solutions for corporate and government clients throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Pactel’s particular specialty is in creating reliable networks for remote sites and rural locations across Australia, Indonesia, and the Pacific Islands.
Offered applications include Internet backbone connectivity, VSAT data solutions, VOIP gateways, broadcast and streaming video solutions, international private leased line,equipment hosting as well as satellite ground system and network design. Large organizations, such as Telikom PNG in Papua New Guinea, the Australian government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the World Health Organisation, and the French overseas territories of Wallis and Futuna, have all benefited from Pactel’s ability to connect far-flung communities.
As a rapidly growing organization, Pactel continually reviews and upgrades its technical capacity to serve a broad customer base, with the aim to deliver high quality communications solutions through the use of leading-edge technologies. The company’s offerings are based on a combination of turnkey solutions for rapid implementation of projects as well as the flexibility to adapt and expand existing services to meet changing and growing market demand. As part of its growth strategy, Pactel recently completed the installation of a new DVB-S2 ACM hub in Hawaii.
The new hub allows Pactel to extend their Internet, VoIP and GSM services into Asia-Pacific, Australia and Indonesia under C-band to meet new business opportunities and increased demand in the area, which had previously been served by Ku-band. This new, fully redundant platform connects directly to Pactel International’s backbone in Hawaii via Gigabit Ethernet Interfaces, which is itself in a fully redundant configuration. The new infrastructure can now provide both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint satellite links.
The very wide dispersal of the communities served by the new hub places a premium on high reliability and Pactel’s choice of Newtec equipment reflected this priority. In addition, Pactel took advantage of Newtec’s one-box solution to replace legacy infrastructure that consisted of multiple receivers, an IP hub, and legacy modem. Newtec’s Elevation family of products provide modulators, demodulators, and satellite modems for the new infrastructure, with the Elevation modulator used at the teleport and the Elevation modem at the remote sites.
“Newtec is known as the market leader and is renowned for quality products in high-rate IP Trunking markets,” said Steffen Holzt, executive director of Pactel International. “The Newtec Elevation technology gives us the ability to increase efficiency and throughput on our new platform, and to advance our abilities to deliver vital telecommunications services to our customers. The quality, reliability and performance the Newtec components were the key factors in our choice, together with Newtec’s proven experience in DVB-S2 and layer 3 IP.”
The Elevation family of products provides state-of-the-art technology for transmission and reception of IP streams over satellite at rates of up to 155 Mbit/s, in full compliance with the DVB-S2 standards. The Elevation modem connects directly to terrestrial IP network infrastructures via a single auto-switching Gigabit Ethernet interface and offers several hardware and software options for flexibility. Pactel’s customer base and range of services encompasses a broad variety of applications, so a flexible infrastructure that will allow alterations to suit evolving customer requirements without changing the equipment is a distinct business advantage.
The Elevation series can be used in point-to-point links as well as in point-to-multipoint networks and is compatible with a wide range of encapsulation protocols: data piping, MPE, ULE and Newtec’s XPE (Extended Performance Encapsulation). The Elevation modem is capable of receiving DVB-S2 Multistream and VCM signals and can optionally transmit in VCM mode.
Optimal bandwidth efficiency and ease of operation are also vital to efficient operations for any satellite services provider. Newtec’s FlexACM controller option offers automatic and dynamic adaptation of the uplink modulation parameters based on the link conditions at the remote site(s). Link conditions are signaled by the remote demodulator and sent back via any IP link (in-band or out-of-band). At the output of the modulator, the signal is available on as L-band , extended L-band, or IF BUC power supply — the optional 10MHz reference frequency provides a compact and cost effective solution.
The Newtec upgrade to the hub allows Pactel International to improve quality of service to its customers by extending the existing services to the Asia-Pacific, Australian, and Indonesian regions on a more advanced, cost-effective platform. Services are being rolled out island by island.
In addition to rain fade mitigation, ACM can also help overcome interference problems. Such allows Pactel to use inclined orbit satellites, where required. As the majority of Pactel’s customers are based on remote islands and rural locations, reliability of service is a key requirement — whole communities often depend on it for all their phone and web-based communication with the rest of the world, as well as for entertainment services.
As the company aquires new customers, building new infrastructure is a simple matter of adding modems in the remote site and creating a new configuration file in the hub. The new technology also enables a much more efficient use of bandwidth through Newtec’s optimization methods, allowing Pactel to add additional sites and reduce satellite transponder operating costs.
Every stage of a telecommunications provider’s infrastructure evolution should bring increases in efficiency as well as quality of service for all existing customers as well as the possibility to reach new markets.. For Pactel, the Newtec-equipped hub in Hawaii offers fresh potential to build relationships with local telecommunications carriers, corporate networks and mining, oil and gas industries – a whole range of new customers hungry for high-quality communications services throughout the region.