Christian Patouraux Named CEO Of The Year For Wholesale & Capacity - Telecom Review

Singapore, 5 April 2022 — Kacific’s achievements in fostering greater internet usage, fueling economic growth, and improving service delivery have been recognised by Telecom Review, with Christian Patouraux honoured as CEO of the Year for Wholesale & Capacity. 

The award, presented to Christian in absentia due to Covid restrictions, was made at the Telecom Review Leaders’ Summit. Telecom Review describes the awards as the standard by which the industry judges its peers.

In making the award, Telecom Review noted: “[Kacific] became the first satellite operator to start from the ground up with neither a parent company nor a license to operate.”

The panel of judges, comprised of leading experts from around the world, paid particular attention to two initiatives, both reflecting Kacific’s response to the COVID-19 crisis.

The first was the services Kacific provided to vulnerable and isolated communities. When the COVID crisis took the world by surprise, and medical care and sharing information were crucial in combatting it, many rural regions throughout the Pacific were without connectivity to the resources of their main cities. To bridge this gap, Kacific rapidly initiated a large-scale Community WiFi project to provide rural health clinics, covered by the reach of the Kacific1 high throughput satellite, with high-quality, low-cost satellite broadband and easy-to-install antennas.

In addition, working in partnership with GuarantCo, Kacific secured a grant from the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) Technical Assistance to fund the terminals and help governments and communities in Asia and the Pacific in their fight against the pandemic. Since the start of this initiative, over 260 terminals have been installed in Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, the Philippines, and Tonga bringing fast affordable broadband to health clinics, schools, and communities in these countries. Kacific’s service has helped government agencies to curb, monitor, and control the spread of infectious Covid-19 clusters in rural areas and provide vital training and support to local medical practitioners to cope with local virus outbreaks.

The second initiative was Kacific’s operational response to the commercial challenges brought on by the pandemic. Kacific1 commenced service delivery on 9 March 2020, just as COVID-19 hit. Since its customer base of ISPs and telcos found themselves unable to commit to long-term contracts, Kacific had to rapidly adapt its business focus to create a new franchise business model. It introduced Gigstarter, a flexible, prepaid, and pre-packaged, broadband plan which allows ISPs to sell bandwidth on a monthly contract to end-users, plan-by-plan, site-by-site, enabling the ISPs to tailor services to meet the actual demands and needs of each customer and to package the broadband service with affordable, easy to install VSAT terminals.

Gigstarter’s offer of unlimited data and a fully managed service set a new global benchmark for satellite internet, which appealed to individuals, remote communities, smaller enterprises, and entrepreneurs. It also allowed ISPs to grow their business without incurring the upfront infrastructure costs and commitments that come with a wholesale contract, during the uncertain times created by the COVID pandemic.

The Gigstarter model also created the opportunity to engage many regional channel partners as Kacific Authorised Dealers (KADs), spurring local penetration and creating opportunities for economic development in remote and rural areas.

“Launching our satellite in 2019 was a transformational moment for Kacific and we have spent the last two years locking in the value created. We set out to make high-speed internet accessible and affordable to unserved markets.” said Christian. “Today, we have become the largest Ka-band operator in Asia Pacific, and this award presented to us is an honour and a validation for our vision, mission, and business.”

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