The satellite IP service provider now doing big business with The Internet Group (Ihug) says ISPs around the world are expanding their use of satellite capacity to meet increased customer demand - although the size of Ihug's link makes most other look like small fry.
PanAmSat noted this week that, in particular, ISPs in Paraguay, Peru, Costa Rica, New Zealand and Indonesia have all recently upgraded the PanAmSat services they use to link to the US Internet backbone.
PanAmSat is seeing "tremendous growth in demand for Internet access services and, in turn, satellite capacity from ISPs around the world," said Chris Vargas, PanAmSat's vice president, telecommunications services, in a printed statement. The company operates a network of 15 satellites, and plans to launch six more satellites by late 1998.
The demands of international ISPs vary greatly by region. For example, New Zealand's Internet Group has gone to a 9Mbit/s link from 1.544Mb/s, while in Latin America, ISPs are upgrading to 512K-bps or 256K-bps links.
PanAmSat, in Greenwich, Connecticut, can be found on the World Wide Web http://www.panamsat.com/.