Bringing South Africa Department of Home Affairs services to even the most remote locations

Conventional wisdom has it that people in rural areas will just have to accept a lack of infrastructure and the resulting absence of the same services enjoyed by their fellow countrymen in the cities. The South African Department of Home Affairs has now turned this accepted fact very firmly on its head.

Giving credence to the Government's promise of taking services to remote areas, the department is employing technology to create mobile facilities rather than establishing a multitude of offices all over the country. We have seen mobile clinics, libraries and pension payout vehicles before, but what makes this case different is the use of satellite communication networking that enables the mobile offices to access centrally held information from any location in the country.

The department uses light trucks that are fitted with thermally insulated bodies and equipped with the same Local Area Networks (LANs), personal computers, and printers used in permanent offices in urban areas. To provide the satellite communication links to the trucks, Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) satellite communications equipment is installed in all vehicles, connecting to a central hub located in the same building as the department head office in Pretoria.

When a mobile office arrives at the desired location, the VSAT deploys an antenna that automatically finds the correct satellite and establishes a data and voice link from the mobile unit to the head office. Using the link, the staff is able to access and update records in real time, issuing birth certificates, identity documents, and passports with minimum delay.

DOHA VSAT Africa

Mopalema Communications, a subsidiary of Palmtree Holdings is a South African provider of satellite communications equipment and services. Mopalema selected the ViaSat LinkStar IP network technology to extend the department's head office capabilities. The LinkStar system is a hub-based VSAT system that incorporates many features that match the best terrestrial enterprise networking systems, but can flow information to even to the most remote service points.

LinkStar VSAT networking provides efficient broadband communications for Internet access, enterprise networking, retail operations, distance learning, and other multimedia applications. Remote LinkStar terminals offer a far wider range of efficient data transfer rates than other VSATs. The versatility extends from fast, low-rate transactional data, to high-speed data file transfer. Terminals can receive data from a shared, 60 megabit-per-second (Mbit/s) broadcast from the access hub, and can transmit back to the hub at up to 2.5 Mbit/s. Dynamic bandwidth allocation increases or decreases data rates on-the-fly for better service and more efficient use of bandwidth. LinkStar hubs and remote terminals are compliant with the digital video broadcast (DVB) international standard. Since its introduction in September 2001, approximately 80,000 LinkStar DVB-RCS-ready terminals have been shipped worldwide to over 100 customers.

The Home Affairs network is an excellent example of a forward looking, service-oriented department using the capabilities of the private sector to accomplish its mission. The result is a combination of local knowledge with international expertise; Mopalema, Ntwese Consortium as the main contractor, Sentech as the South African telecommunications operator and ViaSat supplying the communications network equipment.

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