Liquid Telecom has been named the VSAT Provider of the Year at this year’s SatCom Star Awards, which honour the top satellite and telecommunications projects and influencers throughout Africa.

Now in their 17^th year, The SatCom Star Awards ceremony was held in Johannesburg last night with Liquid Telecom beating off strong competition from Isat Networks and the African Development Bank, which were also shortlisted.

The firm says its success is due to the outstanding service it provides to customers, the wide reach of its satellite network across the continent, the fast speeds and low latency of its network along with affordable pricing based on the company’s belief that broadband connectivity is an entitlement for everybody.

According to Nic Rudnick, CEO of Liquid Telecom,“What a fantastic achievement for our satellite team who work tirelessly to provide our customers with the best satellite service in Africa. I congratulate them all on becoming a SatCom Star.”

The firm serves bank branches, national parks and game lodges, remote mining and exploration companies, Governments, schools and NGO deployments. Liquid Telecom also became the first operator to build a satellite hub at Teraco’s vendor-neutral earth station in South Africa to enable it route African traffic in Africa rather than backhauling it via Europe as many operators need to do.

Apart from yesterday’s award, Liquid Telecom and The East Africa Data Centre were honoured at the 2013 Global Telecoms Business (GTB) Innovation awards as the “Best Business Service Innovation” category for their pioneering work in building the most connected data centre in East Africa.

Liquid Telecom’s Africa’s largest fibre network is over 17,000km across Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, DRC, Lesotho and South Africa.