(2 January 2008 9:00 pm)

BANGALORE: Hughes Communications Indian (HCIL) has been awarded a contract from State Bank of India (SBI) to deploy a network for running its Core banking solution across 1300 branches in the country.

The contract is valued at Rs 400 million. As a managed network service provider, Hughes will offer turnkey solutions like Satellite based VPNs, networking equipment i.e. routers & switches and managed services including system integration and network management.

As per a official Hughes release, this project is one of the largest deals of its kind and will be rolled out on a fast track basis to be completed by February 2008.

Hughes will be deploying DVB-S2 based HN Series of products and CISCO routing equipment. The DVB-S2 is the latest generation standard for transmission over satellite. The “ACM” feature of this standard provides for the Adaptive Coding and Modulation (hence the ACM acronym) of the outbound channel.

Delivering a fully managed broadband services via the DVB-S2 platform would allow Hughes to realize up to 50 per cent more throughput over the satellite than with DVB-S and up to 20 per cent more throughput over the satellite, thus offering SBI greater operational efficiencies and reliable and cost effective connectivity to their rural and semi urban branches.