Eutelsat Satellite Broadband To Transform Service At 300 Poste Italiane offices

Poste Italiane selects Eutelsat Broadband professional solutions for high-speed Internet access in digital divide locations across Italy

Paris, Rome, 25 June 2015 – Services in 300 of Poste Italiane's most rural locations are set to be transformed following signature of a contract for high-speed satellite broadband connectivity between the broadband affiliate of Eutelsat Communications (NYSE Euronext Paris: ETL) and Poste Mobile, the network infrastructure provider for Poste Italiane. The agreement will enable Poste Italiane offices located beyond terrestrial broadband to provide the public with the same level of service as in branches in major towns and cities. Staff will also gain improved office IT and telecommunications services that will benefit their customers.

Using its powerful KA-SAT satellite, Eutelsat Broadband has been selected by Poste Mobile to install, manage and maintain a high-speed satellite communications network between post office locations. The first 120 locations will be connected by the end of 2015 with the additional 180 post offices to follow in 2016.

The agreement is a game-changer for Italian post offices limited to ISDN connections that will now benefit from accelerated download speeds of up to 22Mbps and upload speeds of up to 6 Mbps. The vastly increased performance will enable Italy’s national postal service to enhance postal, insurance and banking services to the public as well as back-office operations.

Using the increased reliability and capacity of Eutelsat's broadband service, Poste Italiane has also successfully tested additional public and back-office services that can be rolled-out in the future. These include public wi-fi access in post offices, security surveillance options and videoconferencing facilities.

Fabrizio Virtuani, CEO of Poste Mobile, said: “Whether in a major city or the remotest rural village, ensuring Poste Italiane customers have universal access to our postal, banking and insurance services is a key objective for us. By using Eutelsat Broadband’s satellite communications we can achieve this goal and propose further benefits and services.”

“This national deployment programme will step up service for Poste Italiane customers and staff working in the most rural offices and underlines the quality and reliability of our connectivity solutions,” said Jean-Francois Fenech, General Manager of Eutelsat Broadband. “Our high-speed satellite services play a vital role in bringing the essential benefits of digital communications to users trapped in the Digital Divide and we are delighted to have the opportunity to demonstrate this value with a significant deployment initiative across Italy.”

Connectivity services provided by Eutelsat Broadband are designed to meet the needs of SOHOs and businesses within the footprint of the KA-SAT satellite that covers Europe, North Africa and large parts of the Middle East. Services are optimised for users in locations where fixed line connectivity is slow or unavailable and also for businesses that need an alternative to fixed line broadband for critical applications such as disaster recovery or back-up. Eutelsat Broadband offers a wide range of data allowances up to 200GB a month and a host of flexible B2B features including Public IP addresses, Business Hour Protection and a range of customisable options including guaranteed bandwidth speeds.

For further information on Eutelsat Broadband’s business solutions or its distributors visit: www.eutelsatbroadband.com