Eutelsat's ToowayT satellite Internet service

Eutelsat Communications, the European leader for satellite communications, has launched its revolutionary new Tooway™ consumer Internet access service in the UK making Lord Carter's Digital Britain vision of universal internet access a reality.

Using satellite technology available from just £29.99 per month, Tooway™ can now offer the UK's rural homes, and those in slowband areas, access to 2 megabit per second (2Mbps) broadband services without the need for any existing telephone line. Tooway™ can deliver broadband for all, as called for by Lord Carter in the Digital Britain interim report published in January this year. The service is also triple play-ready, allowing distributors to offer additional TV and IP telephony services using the same equipment. Tooway™ will be delivered in the UK via a network of certified local distributors, including Bentley Walker Satellite Internet Solutions, Avonline Ltd in Bristol, Satellite Solutions Worldwide Ltd in Oxfordshire and Remote Data Services Ltd in Perthshire, Scotland. The Tooway™ solution consists of a small satellite dish and a modem connected to the PC via Ethernet, giving customers Internet access following a simple installation.

According to Broadband think tank Point Topic large sections of the UK are still without the minimum 2Mbps broadband speed Lord Carter recommends. Around 15 per cent of homes in the East Midlands are currently out of range, as are almost 16 per cent of homes in the North East, nearly 20 per cent in the South West, and around 14 per cent in the South East. The traditional route of extending cable connections capable of running the service to these homes would be expensive and well beyond the 2012 deadline set by Lord Carter.

"Tooway will help make Lord Carter's vision for Digital Britain a reality by revolutionising the consumer market for satellite Internet access," said Arduino Patacchini, Director of Multimedia and Value Added Services at Eutelsat. "Tooway™ is able to offer true broadband access with total independence from existing infrastructures. It has the technology and capacity to become the definitive, low-cost solution for geographical areas that are affected by the digital divide."

Tooway is the first satellite two-way broadband service offering similar speeds and costs to ADSL. The service is based on Eutelsat's satellite coverage, the commercial and infrastructure operating experience of Eutelsat's subsidiary Skylogic and ViaSat's SurfBeam technology. The technology used by Tooway™ comes to Europe after acquiring extensive experience on the North American market, where ViaSat already provides the equipment and network for over 400,000 homes with satellite broadband access fully independent from the terrestrial network. Today, Tooway™ is already serving customers in 20 European countries including Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and Ireland with other countries across Europe rolling out over the coming months.

Tooway operates in the Ku-band in the UK. It is delivered using Eutelsat's EUROBIRD™ 3 satellite at 33º East. The service offers two-way satellite access to users without the need for a telephone line, delivering speeds of 2Mbps on the downlink and 256 Kbps on the uplink.

In 2010, Eutelsat will expand the service with additional high speed Internet access up to 10Mbps. These revolutionary broadband speeds will come from the launch of KA-SAT, a dedicated new satellite from Eutelsat, specifically designed for broadband delivery in Europe. The satellite, which has the combined capacity of forty traditional satellites, will enable Eutelsat to deliver Internet access to up to two million European homes at a similar speed, price and quality to that of terrestrial ADSL2 services.