Providing Internet Connections to Remote Communities in Siberia

Hughes Solution: Satellite-enabled Community Wi-Fi Solutions deliver Internet access at more than 50,000 Wi-Fi hotspots serving millions of users around the world. Connected by satellite, the Wi-Fi hotspots make Internet service available in schools, libraries, community centers, village shops and subscribers’ homes, where landline Internet access is not available or too expensive. 

Hughes Technology: Hughes JUPITER™ System technology brings capacity from conventional or High-Throughput Satellites to each Wi-Fi hotspot location; customers can connect to the Wi-Fi hotspot using a high gain antenna attached to the side of their home or business. Each JUPITER VSAT is capable of 300+ Mbps of throughput and thousands of simultaneous sessions making it possible for many people to access the Internet at the same time using Wi-Fi-enabled devices such as hand-held devices and computers.

The Fixed Community Wi-Fi service is geared toward Internet service providers serving geographic areas where many potential customers live in isolated communities far from terrestrial network access points. Potential Wi-Fi communities include local government offices, mining camps, health clinics, rural villages and schools.

“Before we began providing Community Wi-Fi service with Hughes, many villages in Russia did not have access to reliable broadband Internet service.”

— Sergey Pekhterev, head of the AltegroSky Group

Customer: AltegroSky and KB Iskra, two leading satellite service operators in the Russian market

1. Situation: In Russia, about a fourth of the population lives in isolated cities and villages in the vast region east of the Ural Mountains known as  Siberia. More than 20 million Russians in this region live in thousands of small villages of fewer than 250 households each. Even if a network operator could provide dedicated VSAT service to these villages, the per capita income is too low for most users to afford monthly Internet service on a household basis.
2. Approach: In 2018, two Internet service providers, AltegroSky and KB Iskra, partnered with Hughes to deploy over 1,300 community Wi-Fi hotspots in small towns and villages. Each Wi-Fi access point is connected to a two-way satellite dish (a VSAT), which bounces its signal off a geostationary satellite to a Hughes JUPITER™ System Gateway that in turn hands off the traffic to the Internet cloud. Each Wi-Fi hotspot can connect fixed users (for example, in homes) or personal devices (handset, tablets, PCs). Users can buy the Wi-Fi Internet service in various data plans to suit their needs (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly). By marrying a VSAT with a Wi-Fi hotspot, the service providers are able to quickly and inexpensively provide high-speed Internet to the community.
3. Application: Hughes customers have deployed Community Wi-Fi solutions in many out-of-the-way corners of the world, spanning more than 50,000 sites and enabling Internet connections for millions of users. Hughes Community Wi-Fi solutions are a cost-effective answer for Internet service providers wanting to reach customers who could not otherwise afford high-speed Internet access. Service providers can install Community Wi-Fi for a fraction of the capital investment compared to traditional terrestrial wired broadband deployment. 
   

“About 90 percent of our B2C subscribers are connected to Hughes VSATs collectively…It is difficult to overestimate the social significance of satellite solutions.”

— Andrey Romulov, chairman of the Board of Directors of KB Iskra

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