Marking their sixth year in telecommunications industry, Broadlink has said that it will launch Africa’s first vendor neutral satellite earth station in 2014, and it will be located at the Teraco Data Environment in Isando, Johannesburg.

“The satellite platform will act as a hub to connect satellite feed with terrestrial telecommunications networks. Our participation in the earth station is also in line with the company’s growth strategy, which includes further expansion into the African continent and will allow us to offer to our current and future customers world-class satellite products and services,” says Mike Brown, MD of Broadlink.

“Central to the planning of the satellite hub, is the fact that it will have full geo-redundancy capabilities when it goes live. An obvious benefit here is that these geo-redundant offerings will become available for our clients requiring more mission critical services. It is an exciting project and will allow us to market services and products more effectively as we grow,” he added.

Lex van Wyk, CEO of Teraco Data Environments says that they were proud to welcome Broadlink in joining the Teleport and also to see that it is taking advantage of their market-leading infrastructure.

The Teraco Teleport lowers the barriers to entry for smaller telecommunications companies and enables organisations to connect to a community of over 50 telecommunications companies. Broadlink through NAPAfrica, will now be able to distribute its services to the Teraco community without incurring on-going last mile costs.

Brown said that the Teleport will allow Broadlink to develop, plan and manage the satellite services and products making sure that the company offers  are aligned according to the needs of the customers and sellers.

“We’re finding that more and more of our clients are requesting satellite connectivity alongside their wireless requirements, with one of the key drivers being the need for connecting into Africa for multi-national companies. In addition, the vendor neutral positioning of the station enables us to connect with our key channel partners which include an array of ISPs as well as other telecoms players,” he said.

The hub will should be completed by December this year  so that service and products be availed fron February 2014.