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For a country recovering from economic erosion due to sanctions and conflict, the key step to getting back on the path to recovery and development is to quickly develop the infrastructure, especially communications infrastructure, for businesses and individuals to function. This is the situation currently facing Iraq.
Onenation Satcom, based in northern Iraq, provides Internet access through VSAT. However, this is too expensive for most businesses and individuals and moreover, the bandwidth is limited. To quickly extend their market and provide more affordable access, Onenation turned to smartBridges’ latest Nexus series of wireless radios for last mile connectivity.
These smartBridges access points provide coverage for businesses and residents in the whole of Kirkuk City
With their new wireless network, they are now providing broadband Internet to businesses and residents in Kirkuk, an important city with over one million residents and the base for many foreign companies. The economy is picking up and there is a huge demand for the services that Onenation Satcom is providing.
To find out how Onenation Satcom met these demands, read on.
Background
Onenation Satcom Ltd is based in Arbil with several branches in other cities like Kirkuk and Sulaymaniah. Their Kirkuk City office building, containing administrative offices, technical support center and an Internet Café is situated centrally. They provide satellite, wireless and dialup or ADSL Internet access to businesses and residents. Their market size is estimated at 15,000 subscribers for the whole of Northern Iraq.
Kirkuk City in Northern Iraq – Satellite is the expensive way businesses are using to access the Internet
Kirkuk has one of the biggest oil fields in Iraq and is a key link between southern and northern Iraq. With a multi-cultural population of Sunnis, Shiites, Christian, Turkmen and expatriates, it is expected to grow rapidly with the new free market in Iraq.
3 airPoint Nexus installed on a 75 ft (25 m) tower at Onenation Satcom’s building. These access points provide coverage for businesses and residents in the whole of Kirkuk City
Many Kirkuk residents work all over Iraq as well as regionally, and hence need to communicate with family members. There are almost no digital telephone networks for dialup or ADSL. As Rebin Sadun Khorshid, Co-Founder of Onenation, said:
“People had to pay up to 5 dollars a minute just to contact their families and the quality of communications between the outside world and Iraq was very bad. Now with the service we are providing, we are seeing happier people who know anytime with a click that their families are safe and can even talk to them using VoIP call software. Businesses are also growing now that there is a free market and a secure way of communicating with corporations and companies around the world.”
The Internet backbone comes from a fully dedicated link from Panamsat4 satellite. Onenation is the main distributor for this satellite for the whole of Iraq.
He continued, “We heard about smartBridges after doing some research and we knew their products were exactly what we were looking for after reading the equipment specifications and the success stories from around the world.”
Here is how the smartBridges Nexus equipment selected by Rebin measured up to Onenation’s requirements:
| Nexus Features |
Benefits for Onenation |
| Temperature rating: -45ºC to +60ºC |
Operation in Kirkuk's temperatures of 5ºC to 50ºC+ |
| COFDM Radio |
Resistance to multi-path delays allows all potential customers in Kirkuk City to be reached |
| Bandwidth Management |
To configure throughput to each client and provide differentiated Service Level Agreements (SLA). |
| Advanced RF Interference Mitigation |
For a better signal quality and noise rejection |
| Low latency and roundtrip delay |
Critical for VoIP calls and future implementation of video conferencing |
Data Security using Wi-Fi Protected Access
(WPA, IEEE802.11i) |
To protect the data transmitted wirelessly over the air to and from clients |
Different Operational Modes:
Bridge/NAT/Router |
For building a hierarchical network for future expansion |
Ranya Net is a key customer of Onenation Satcom
smartBridges Sales Manager for the Middle East, Sonam Bhutia, said, “Iraq, after the recent conflicts, is beginning to develop rapidly and hence there is an urgent need for a secure, high bandwidth communication solution from both enterprises and consumers. With smartBridges high price-to-performance range of wireless radios operating in the unlicensed bands, Onenation was able to quickly set up an extensive network, utilising their VSAT source to provide service to more customers.”
To learn exactly how they did it, click here.
Click here to contact us if you are interested in doing a similar deployment.
For more customer success stories, click here.
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Wireless Infrastructure Equipment 
