Hughes rolls out Pan-India channel network

New Delhi

10 October 2007

Tapping into the burgeoning needs of IT and telecom services for SMB
customers, Hughes introduced satellite broadband service plans in 'terrestrially
underserved locations'. Targeted at organizations with single and multiple
locations, it is looking to offer these services to customers who use the
Internet to connect to remote locations and run critical applications like ERP
(SAP, Oracle etc), Intranet applications, web-based applications, Point of Sale
applications etc.

Hughes is planning to tap 30,000 of these installations over the next three
years and has started investing in creating a robust channel network for the
same. By the end of the year, Hughes is hopeful of closing on 30 business
partners to offer its services in area's that have hereto been bereft of
quality SLA's and inferior DSL services.

“Hughes has over the last few years offered products and services that
cater to the needs of the enterprise market. However, with the maturity of the
SME market, there is a need to create differentiation and offer solutions that
map on to their business imperatives. Hughes SME division is thus poised to
offer relevant and cost effective satellite broadband services as a large
portion of this market does not have access to reliable connectivity options”,
said Amit Tripathi, Senior VP and Head SME Business, SME Business, Hughes
Communications India.

As per a report by Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc., SMB
companies with up to 999 employees in India are set to spend more than $8
billion to beef up their IT infrastructure, up a robust 24 percent since last
year. While computing products will still account for the bulk of IT
investments, Internet spending is fast increasing as these enterprises embrace
IP-enabled business process services.

According to another report by AMI, SMB in India spent over $5 billion on
telecom equipment and services last year, five percent over 2005. Spending on
telecom services such as cellular services, IP centrex services, local and long
distance telephony accounted for more than 90 percent of the total telecom
spending. The ERP penetration among the SMEs are also increasing day by day as
SMEs have realized that they have to look at ICT and process Automation in order
to be competitive globally.

Hughes claims to offer a combination of reach and speed and a 99.5 percent
uptime in addition to a 24X7 technical assistance center (TAC). Some of the
other attributes of these service plans include unlimited download service plans
with defined QoS and quick rollout anywhere in India. It also offers secure
connection through a satellite router with an integrated firewall as well as
managed broadband enterprise class service.