Marlink Supports Digital Transformation in French Guiana with Country-wide Infrastructure to Enable Internet Access

The Collectivité Territoriale de Guyane (CTG) has selected Marlink, the smart network solutions company, to support the digital development with the provision of very high data rate Internet access services in areas of French Guiana outside terrestrial mobile coverage.

An outermost French region situated on the northeast coast of South America, French Guiana will benefit from the provision of digital solutions and services that will connect the country’s people, communities, and businesses to broadband internet and 4G/5G services.

Marlink has previously provisioned bandwidth to the country’s educational institutions and enabled internet access in rural areas. The new 15-year agreement will provide very high data rate access to the Internet, in line with European Union guidelines to build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation.

In an innovative partnership with Luxembourg-based SES, the leader in global content connectivity solutions, Marlink will build and manage a local gateway infrastructure to provide services and nearly 3.5 gigabits per second of capacity on SES-17 (SES’s geostationary satellite) and O3b mPOWER (SES’s second-generation medium earth orbit constellation) for seamless, hybrid connection of an estimated 30,000 users.

This unique configuration will enable communities in the vast rural areas and those in urban centres to enjoy high throughput internet access of 30 Mbps. This will allow schools and institutions located in the area to benefit from better speeds and lower latency to ultimately bridge the digital divide.

The agreement highlights the evolution in global satellite communications, with Marlink moving from providing satellite capacity to becoming an integrator of fully managed digital network solutions. The agreement provides the flexibility to provide capacity available to mobile network operators via the Marlink network to offer enhanced 4G/5G services across the territory.

We are proud to bridge the digital divide and be part of this nationwide digital transformation to support economic and social growth, by connecting critical services and remote communities, as well as educational institutions for the next 15 years, says Alexandre de Luca, President, Energy, Enterprise and Government, Marlink. Our provision of digital services has grown with customer demand and we are again responding with agility and flexibility to deliver connectivity as a service.

The digital divide is a challenging reality, especially for small remote villages in places like the Amazonian Forest in French Guiana, and we are partnering with Marlink to enable digital inclusion in some of the most isolated communities in the world, said Simon Gatty Saunt, Vice President of Networks Sales, Europe at SES. SES is honoured to play a role in bringing the most advanced and empowering broadband connectivity to the towns, villages, businesses and people throughout the region, which will unlock the full potential of French Guiana.