CAPE TOWN (miningweekly.com) – Pan-African telecommunications group Liquid Telecom has deployed its first Mx-DMA satellite link to a mining company in Africa, the company announced during a presentation at the Investing in African Mining Indaba, held in Cape Town this week.

Liquid Telecom satellite and very small aperture terminal (VSAT) group managing executive Scott Mumford told conference delegates that Mx-DMA technology was a “new and innovative” bandwidth allocation technology for satellite developed on the Newtec Dialog VSAT platform, which could lead to bandwidth efficiency gains of up to 50%, thereby providing more reliable and efficient, high-throughput connectivity for mining operations across the region.

He said that, with Africa’s mines typically located in remote areas, where fibre was unavailable, mining organisations were reliant on legacy satellite links that could only be configured to suit one type of traffic, resulting in high data rates. “Mx-DMA combines the best of these qualities to offer mining customers on-demand variable bandwidth allocation and enhanced efficiencies,” Mumford stated.

He highlighted that the Newtec Dialog platform was capable of supporting throughputs at speeds as high as 75 Mb/s and could be customised to withstand the harsh conditions often found at mining operations across Africa, such as heat, dust and sandstorms.

“As more mining companies pursue automation across their operations, greater focus is falling on connectivity. Hence, Newtec’s Mx-DMA technology is a unique fit for the sector, offering the reliability, scalability and flexibility required by today’s mining customers,” Mumford said.

Newtec sub-Saharan Africa regional sales director Pieter-Paul Mooijman added that the company was pleased to see Liquid Telecom expand its VSAT service portfolio into “demanding VSAT markets” such as those of the African mining industry through the deployment of Newtec’s technologies.

“Liquid Telecom clearly demonstrates the value of the Newtec Dialog multiservice platform to address a vast range of services covering broadband, enterprise, energy and mining and any other VSAT markets,” he stated.