Liquid Dataport and satellite services provider Intelsat have partnered to boost the availability of connectivity during bouts of load-shedding.
Liquid Dataport is the wholesale connectivity arm of Liquid Intelligent Technologies, a business of Cassava Technologies.
Ahead of the Africa Tech Festival 2023, which kicks-off today in Cape Town, the companies announced their collaboration, which sees the introduction of Liquid’s ‘service continuity’.
Liquid Dataport says organisations can maintain business-critical applications during times when there are power cuts, by accessing its low-power satellite equipment that runs off solar panels or small generators.
These services, notes the company, are already being provided in South Africa, with an emphasis on mitigating load-shedding challenges.
David Eurin, CEO of Liquid Dataport, explains: “Access to high-speed connectivity is critical to digital transformation in Africa, as the continent works towards becoming a digital economy. However, the impact of intermittent availability of electricity in recent years is a major hurdle in Africa becoming a digital economy.
“Due to our collaboration with Intelsat, we can now help businesses remain connected even during the hours of load-shedding. This project will prove to be a key asset to bridge the digital divide as businesses will no longer be impacted by connectivity downtime.”
Speaking to ITWeb ahead of the announcement, Rhys Morgan, vice-president, EMEA media and networks sales at Intelsat, said the company looks forward to supporting Liquid Dataport’s efforts in minimising disruptions caused by load-shedding for businesses in SA.
“We’ve extended and expanded our relationship with them [Liquid Dataport] and as part of that, we’ve taken a look at the way we work together and we’ve tried to develop some new approaches into the market.
“One of the key initiatives is unfortunately driven by something that’s not necessarily very positive and that is load-shedding.
“Load-shedding is having a major impact on people but also on commerce because during load-shedding, often the mobile network goes down; equally, fibre networks are being hit during this time.
“There are a lot of businesses that are looking for continuity in terms of communications during those load-shedding incidents, which are often for a number of hours a day.
“We’ve worked with Liquid to develop ‘service continuity’, so that any business that’s looking for connectivity won’t be impacted by load-shedding, assuming the business itself has some power. Then it will be a series of specific…satellite links to enable those businesses to remain on the communications grid, whether that’s for point of sales, security or just general internet connectivity.”
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