Yahsat Announces Commercial Achievement Figures for 0

Dubai, United Arab Emirates, March 11th, 2014: Al Yah Satellite Communications Company, Yahsat, the Abu Dhabi based satellite operator, today announced the company's commercial milestones and associated average revenue per user (ARPU) figures for the fiscal year ending December 2013. The first year of operation results have positioned last year's successful roll-out of YahClick, the company's flagship high-speed satellite broadband internet service, as the leading satellite broadband Ka-band service across Africa.

The company made the announcement on the first day of CABSAT, the Middle East and Africa's number one satellite telecommunications, broadcasting and professional content management event, taking place from March 11-13 at the Dubai World Trade Center.

During YahClick's first year of operation in 2013, the blended average monthly revenue per user (ARPU) ranged between $100-$125. In addition, the company's in-country Service Partners across the 12 markets launched to date have acquired more than 20,000 subscribers in 2013. YahClick is currently available in Angola, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, UAE, Turkey, Yemen, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Part of our mandate as a company is to be the global partner of choice for reliable, innovative and affordable satellite solutions, and a company that is able to drive social and economic growth across continents for both home and business users, said Masood M. Sharif Mahmood, Chief Executive Officer for Yahsat. With this approach in mind, we were able to become the number one Ka-band broadband satellite provider in Africa within a year of launching the YahClick service. This is testament to the quality of service and the benefits that YahClick brings to delivering much needed connectivity to fast developing regions throughout Africa, the Middle East and Central and South West Asia.

Broadband internet is a highly competitive market industry, across the countries where YahClick is operational, there is a distinct lack of reliable high-speed internet infrastructure, particularly in rural or remote areas, explained Mahmood. In South Africa for example, YahClick is used by the Police Force to monitor remote stations and deploy traffic management services and applications across the country. YahClick connections are more reliable and much faster than dated mobile internet technologies, and they bypass the infrastructure requirement for fixed line technologies for easier deployment. Above all, YahClick provides coverage over vast geographic regions, irrespective of population density in these locations. It's largely due to these factors that YahClick has been so positively welcomed across our service areas, added Shawkat Ahmed, Chief Commercial Officer for Yahsat.

At the household level, the internet plays a very important role in improving educational standards for children and young adults so they can compete in today's world, Shawkat continued. YahClick is all about providing an affordable means for residents of small towns and rural areas to engage in the educational and economic opportunities made available to those living in large urban areas where communications networks are more developed.

In September 2012, Yahsat launched YahClick, offering broadband coverage over 28 countries with a total combined population of more than 1 billion people. YahClick is designed to provide satellite broadband Internet to a wide range of industries, including NGOs, government, educational organisations, media and broadcast, as well as home users.

In 2013, Yahsat won the coveted SatCom Africa award for Most Innovative Product and Service for Africa for the second consecutive year for YahClick, as well as SAMENA's Best Satellite Services award for YahClick. Much of this success goes back to Yahsat's promise of connecting the unconnected, where the company's YahClick service has been deployed to provide much-needed connectivity for the Ministry of Interior in Afghanistan, where YahClick was used for National ID registration. Similarly, YahClick was used for the NGA project in Pakistan to offer education through vans fitted with YahClick, allowing for a mobile education initiative roll-out across the country. In Kenya, YahClick was used to connect rural health clinics in a country-wide eHealth project, while schools in Nigeria were connected as part of the universal broadband program being deployed across the country.

YahClick also offers YahClick Insure, which is designed to maintain connectivity for business and enterprise users as an instant backup solution, should the user's primary terrestrial internet link be disrupted. By paying only when they actually use the YahClick service, this allows businesses to minimise potential loss of revenue or productivity risks caused by terrestrial internet outages.

YahClick is beamed through Yahsat's second satellite Y1B satellite, the first satellite in the region to offer internet connectivity through Ka-band multi-spot beams, providing a greater level of overall efficiency and cost-effective broadband solutions.

LINK:	http://www.yahsat.com/yahsat-announces-commercial-achievement-figures-...
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