{"id":84984,"date":"2011-04-18T19:08:34","date_gmt":"2011-04-18T11:08:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/starsat-ceo-satellite-support-crucial-in-eastern-european-civil-projects\/"},"modified":"2011-04-18T19:08:34","modified_gmt":"2011-04-18T11:08:34","slug":"starsat-ceo-satellite-support-crucial-in-eastern-european-civil-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/starsat-ceo-satellite-support-crucial-in-eastern-european-civil-projects\/","title":{"rendered":"Starsat CEO: Satellite Support Crucial in Eastern European Civil Projects"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Albanian broadband provider <strong>Starsat<\/strong>\u2019s focus over the next year is to bring the benefits of  satellite data services to rural parts of Albania where there is no  terrestrial infrastructure. The company, which works alongside <strong>SES Astra<\/strong>  and <strong>Newtec<\/strong>, is playing a key role in connecting rural communities and  schools.<br \/>\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Starsat CEO Dritan Vreshta told <em>Via Satellite<\/em> that  Albania\u2019s existing government has been focused on making  telecommunications and the Internet widely available for its citizens.  \u201cIn 2009, there was a project to deliver broadband Internet to schools.  We have started to deliver Internet to every school. At the time, only  600 out of 2,000 schools in Albania could be connected. Now they are all  able to receive service,\u201d he said. <br \/>\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Starsat also started working on a project last summer to make  Albania\u2019s postal system more efficient, partnering with Albania\u2019s  incumbent post provider Albania Post. \u201cThey decided to have Internet in  all their post offices all around Albania. While 220 offices were in  urban areas, 300 are located in places where there was no terrestrial  infrastructure. We have now 300 post offices up and running with 400  Mbps download and 256 Mbps upload. At the time of implementing the  project, it was considered attractive for many postal operators around  the world. We are promoting this as a case study to post office  companies around the world,\u201d he said. <br \/>\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Despite progress being made in connecting different parts of  Albanian society, the cost of hardware for implementing satellite  projects remains a challenge for Vreshta. While costs have been coming  down, projects still require significant capital investment. \u201cIt is  still expensive to buy the hardware. But this is coming down as  technology from companies like Newtec have a self-install element. We  have clients that can install it themselves. This is a very good  option.\u201d<br \/>\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Because of Albania\u2019s long history of higher hardware costs, Vreshta  said that Starsat has had to take on the task of educating the public  and government agencies of the industry\u2019s changing dynamics and  technology, which he believes are critical to the country\u2019s developing  economy.<br \/>\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; \u201cMany people in Albania still believe satellite solutions are not as  viable. It is totally different when you go to the Middle East and  Africa, where people are much more aware of satellite. We are actively  educating European government agencies about the performance of  satellite and are telling them that it exists with attractive costs,\u201d he  said. \u201cSatellite is very important to Albania\u2019s future. The main angle  we have to focus on is Albania as a post-communist society that has a  lot of problems in terms of the development of terrestrial  infrastructure. We have inherited nothing from the previous government.  We have no cable in most of the rural areas and lack of terrestrial  infrastructure has led to satellite communications being a must.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Albanian broadband provider Starsat\u2019s focus over the next year is to bring the benefits of satellite data services to rural parts of Albania where there is no terrestrial infrastructure. The company, which works alongside SES Astra and Newtec, is playing a key role in connecting rural communities and schools. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Starsat CEO Dritan Vreshta told [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84984"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}