Telecommunications company Vocus has unveiled bonding for its satellite services, offering metro fibre-like internet speeds across Australia.
Vocus aims to supply mining companies across Australia with reliable, high-speed internet services.
The company’s latest solution merges multiple Vocus Satellite – Starlink connections together, boosting bandwidth with the aim of increasing speed and reliability.
Uranium miner Heathgate Resources recently relied on bonded Vocus Satellite – Starlink services at its remote Beverley site in South Australia.
A fire had broken out in the nearby Gammon Ranges, damaging the microwave communication tower the company used for its primary connectivity.
In the month prior to the fire, Vocus had installed eight Starlink terminals, bonded together to provide up to 1.3 gigabytes per second downstream, and up to 200 megabytes upstream, throughput.
The newly installed service was able to support the mine site’s entire operation.
“Thanks to the bonded Vocus Satellite – Starlink services, the mine site experienced no loss of production, network availability or connectivity,” Heathgate Resources chief information officer Hugh Banister said.
Banister said the site’s redundant communication option was previously limited to two megabytes per second satellite link.
“During outages, business communications were restricted to essential safety and operational services,” he said.
“The bonded Vocus Satellite – Starlink service has significantly improved our situation, allowing the mine site to keep operating even in unforeseen circumstances.”
Vocus’ solution can bond multiple connection types like mobile networks or other low earth orbit satellite providers and works on moving vehicles allowing for greater mobility.
“While there are other link aggregation solutions on the market, many send data from each application over just one connection at a time,” Vocus satellite development manager Ashley Grove said.
“That’s like having a multi-lane highway but only using one of the lanes for a single application like a video call.
“Vocus bonded Satellite – Starlink services use all the ‘lanes’ at the same time, allowing all the bandwidth to be used at once by any application.
“This changes the landscape in Australian telecommunications.”
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