EL Corte Inglés Of Spain To Distribute Eutelsat’s Tooway Satellite Broadband Service
6 May 2009
El Corte Inglés and Eutelsat Communications announced that the Tooway™ satellite broadband service will be available through Spain’s leading retailer to consumers across the country who are located beyond range of terrestrial broadband coverage. The announcement follows the signature of a Tooway™ distribution agreement inked between Eutelsat, Europe’s leading satellite operator, and the technology subsidiary of the El Corte Inglés Group.
Informática El Corte Inglés will commercialise Tooway™ through its own distribution network which offers customers installation and maintenance services. By distributing Tooway™, Informática el Corte Inglés is expanding its current range of communications solutions. As well as developing its own ICT products, the subsidiary of the El Corte Inglés Group specialises in integrating third-party applications in order to produce the most competitive technological solutions on the market.
Tooway™ is the most economical and immediately available solution for consumers across Spain wanting satellite broadband access to the Internet in areas with little or no terrestrial coverage.
This is the first satellite broadband Internet service in Spain that can offer speeds of 2 Mbps on the downlink and 384 kbps on the uplink at prices comparable to ADSL. Thanks in particular to its strong price/quality ratio, Tooway™ is revolutionising the market for consumers in rural or suburban areas who do not have satisfactory access to a traditional network.
Using capacity on Eutelsat’s HOT BIRD™ 6 satellite at 13 East, Tooway™ is trailblazing the market for satellite-based broadband Internet access in the Ka-band in Europe. Ka-band capacity and the technology used for the associated equipment increases the satellite’s transmission capacity and consequently reduces the cost per Megabit, making Tooway™ a high-performance IP access service at far lower cost to other available satellite-based Internet solutions.
In 2010 Eutelsat will deploy a new satellite infrastructure to support the service’s widescale deployment throughout Europe. Specifically dedicated to broadband access, Eutelsat’s KA-SAT satellite and ground infrastructure will offer consumers a broadband solution meeting evolving high bitrate applications by offering performance levels comparable to ADSL 2, with user speeds up to 10 Mbps.
