African Development Bank Expands Managed Satellite Services Contract with Hughes

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has awarded a managed satellite services contract to Hughes Network Systems, LLC. Hughes will expand managed satellite services for the AfDB, and provide MPLS connectivity to the region.

The AfDB is headquartered in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire and operates from its Temporary Relocation Agency in Tunis, Tunisia.

The expanded managed services contract has Hughes providing MPLS circuits for four AfDB sites, as well as backhaul (STM1) services to the Tunisian headquarters from a teleport in Germany. Applications provided include SAP, VoIP, high-speed Internet access and video conferencing.

The AfDB has been a managed services customer with Hughes since 2008, and employs a primary communications network comprised of broadband satellite terminals located in 32 field offices throughout Africa. The agency has stringent requirements for its network, including high availability and uniform SLA and QoS offerings.

They also require a single vendor to provide turnkey managed services and ongoing system engineering, installation and field maintenance.

The AfDB also requires monthly reporting, statistics and quarterly review on usage and performance, along with a 24/7 multi-lingual help desk. The group is focused on contributing to the economic development and social progress of African countries. It does this by seeking to stimulate and mobilize internal and external resources to promote investments and offer Regional Member Countries (RMC) technical assistance.

"Hughes has been a valued managed services provider to AfDB for many years," said David Wu, director at AfDB. "Their superior proactive monitoring and field services have earned my trust. My team can call on one trusted source which allows them to focus on our core competency -- banking IT. We count on the continued support of Hughes and plan to integrate Hughes into our portfolio of telecommunications service providers we present to our clients."

"We are proud to have earned AfDB's trust and to be chosen as a valued partner in meeting their entire wide area network needs," added Kamran Givpoor, vice president of Global Managed Services at Hughes.