The trial used SES’s medium earth orbit (MEO) satellites to show how SES’s O3b constellation can extend 5G coverage to remote locations and support du’s enterprise customers to places like offshore energy sites, with network connectivity.
“du has vast experience using satellites for its own cellular backhaul, as well as for delivering satellite-enabled data communications services to our enterprise customers, but we need much better throughputs and low-latency performance to support our enterprise, cloud, and data growth applications," said Saleem AlBlooshi, chief technology officer, du.
"O3b mPOWER promises to provide the dedicated multi-gigabit per connection scale with cloud-optimised and low-latency performance to provide the required quality of experience with the flexibility of satellite.”
During the live proof of concept, numerous tests were conducted over an SES’s O3b satellite, including voice and data scenarios to measure quality of service performance and stress test load capacity.
It showed that O3b is an ideal solution for 5G satellite-enabled networks with quality of experience on par with existing terrestrial backhauling technologies.
“We appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with du on this demonstration of high-performance MEO services and how we can jointly deploy the Middle East’s first satellite-enabled 5G backhaul network," said John-Paul Hemingway, chief strategy & product officer of SES.
"du can leverage more guaranteed-SLA bandwidth, with greater flexibility, via O3b mPOWER to rapidly generate new revenue streams by expanding high-quality 4G/5G to remote areas and by cost effectively connecting its enterprise customers.”
SES is already in the process of deploying its O3b mPOWER technology which will enable high-performance services with high levels of throughput, low latency, and the flexibility required to meet traffic demand.
O3b mPOWER expected to come into service in 2023 giving du customers secure, carrier-grade performance.
