The following case studies represent a wide variety of industries and clients that use UltiSat products and services, either through direct or indirect contract vehicles. UltiSat customers include the US government, nongovernmental organizations, and a range of commercial customers from the resource management, finance, transportation and infrastructure-operators sectors.

• Nongovernmental Agency
• US Department of Defense (DoD) Teleport Program: Upgrades to DoD Teleports
• Military Sealift Command (MSC): Military Sealift Command BEST Program
• Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs Worldwide wide-area network (WAN)
• Chevron/Texaco African Satellite Network Infrastructure
• Orange (formerly Equant) Africa Satellite Network
• SCB Bank Pan-African Broadband Project

Nongovernmental Organization (NGO)

Key Points:

• Turnkey, multiyear prime contract.
• Multiple satellite operations (six supported today).
• Multiple teleport operations (three supported today).
• Truly global network as sites exist on all continents and on smaller land masses including remote islands.
• All terrestrial backhauls and virtual private networks (VPNs) provided by UltiSat.
• Network managed by UltiSat on a 24/7 basis for network management, help desk, maintenance, and warranty support.
• Licenses acquired for operations in many countries on six different continents.

UltiSat was awarded a prime contract to design, deploy, operate and maintain a global hybrid satellite/terrestrial network with hundreds of remote sites for a prominent nongovernmental organization (NGO). As the prime contractor for this project, UltiSat, is responsible for the program on a turnkey basis, including satellite space segment, teleport, telecom licensing, program management, engineering design, network implementation, operations and lifecycle maintenance throughout the term of this contract. UltiSat believes this is one of the most diverse satellite communications network in the world today.

A mix of fixed satellite services, mobile satellite services and terrestrial technologies are used in this network, incorporating IP/TDMA, MPLS, IPSec, and a host of other advanced networking and security features. To deploy and operate a network of this complexity, UltiSat team has built a virtual global support organization that includes multiregional field-service teams and repair/maintenance facilities.

To ensure a smooth migration, day-to-day collaboration with the client, and premium customer care during the critical initial network migration phase, UltiSat collocated its program management office and service management desk at the customer's headquarters.

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US Department of Defense (DoD) Teleport Program: Upgrades to DoD Teleports

Key Points:

• Satcom systems integration at four of the six DoD teleports.
• Deployment of eight major earth stations in highly secure environments.
• Dealt with challenged environment at Lago di Patria due to space limitations to successfully install new earth stations.

UltiSat was awarded a major subcontract by Arrowhead Global Solutions, Inc. to design, deploy, commission and maintain eight US DoD teleport earth stations as part of the military GIG-BE infrastructure. Project commenced in early 2004 and deployment was completed by end of 2005. UltiSat continues to provide services to all installed equipment today.

Each of the four teleports required installation of a pair of large earth stations comprising the following major subsystems:

• 16-Meter C-band tracking antenna subsystem.
• 750-Watt HPA subsystem (1:1 redundant).
• C-Band LNA subsystem (1:1 redundant).
• Up/Down converter subsystem (1:8 redundant).
• Fiber optic IFL subsystem (1:1 redundant).
• 9-Meter Ku-band tracking antenna subsystem.
• 750-Watt HPA subsystem (1:1 redundant).
• Ku-Band LNA subsystem (1:1 redundant).
• Up/Down converter subsystem (1:8 redundant).
• Fiber optic IFL subsystem (1:1 redundant).

To fulfill the DoD Teleport requirements, UltiSat successfully undertook and completed turnkey program management, design, integration, installation and commissioning of all teleport earth stations which were deployed at the following locations:

• Wahiawa, Hawaii, USA.
• Camp Roberts, California, USA.
• Landstuhl, Germany.
• Lago di Patria, Italy.

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Military Sealift Command (MSC): Military Sealift Command BEST Program

Key Points:

• Global project in the three oceanic regions.
• Installation on US naval vessels.
• Provided multimedia/broadband capability over L-band technologies for MSC.

UltiSat's predecessor company, Innovative Communications Technologies, Inc. (ICTI) was awarded a contract in 2001 to design, develop, integrate, install and commission an advanced broadband networking solution for the Military Sealift Command (MSC) fleet. MSC, the logistics arm of the US Navy, consists of a 150-vessel fleet that operates on a global basis in all 3 ocean regions.

The networking solution deployed across the entire MSC fleet was based on the unique, patented bandwidth efficient satellite transport (BEST) technology pioneered by UltiSat's predecessor company. BEST multiplexed a series of multimedia applications (voice, data and video) into a single converged stream for efficient delivery via L-band satellites (such as Inmarsat).

Because it relied on leveraging commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) networking technologies based on use of frame relay protocols, the deployed BEST solution was 100% open standards from a networking perspective. The unique attributes incorporated by UltiSat staff for this project included development of bandwidth-on-demand use of scarce and costly Inmarsat spectrum, advanced scheduling techniques for delivery and posting of user-defined transmission plans on a real-time basis, spoofing techniques for point-to-multipoint delivery of payload load, and integration of this solution with legacy Inmarsat shipboard terminals.

The BEST solution was fielded across the MSC fleet by the end of 2002 and continues to be used today by MSC. BEST has been recognized across the industry as the most innovative and cost-effective, fleet-based, asymmetric, broadband solution deployed on Inmarsat satellites and has resulted in dramatically more efficient operations and significant cost savings for MSC and its end users.

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Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs Worldwide WAN

Key Points:

• Highly secure/mission-sensitive global network.
• Provisioning of space segment/teleports by UltiSat.
• Multisatellite (three supported today).
• Multiteleport (two supported today).
• More than 50 sites on five continents supported.
• Five-year contract.
• 24/7 Help desk, maintenance, and warranty support.
• End-to-end systems design created by UltiSat.
• All installations and training performed by UltiSat.
• Dedicated program management.

UltiSat was awarded a subcontract to design, deploy and maintain the satellite portion of the next-generation Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Dutch MoFA) global telecommunications embassy network. The deployed solution provided for secure, reliable transport of voice and data traffic between remote embassy locations throughout the world and the MoFA’s headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands.

The satellite network implemented for the Dutch MoFA was based on a hybrid SCPC and bandwidth-on-demand (BOD) solution, providing for flexible sharing of network resources and allocation of dedicated capacity to sites on a scheduled basis. Coverage spanned 50 remote site locations throughout South America, Africa, the Middle East, SW Asia, and SE Asia. The network uses three C-band satellites with teleport services at two teleports: Fuchstadt, Germany and Bercenay, France.

To enhance network availability, redundancy and resiliency schemes were designed and implemented via UltiSat’s Master Station Controller (MSC) product, including 1:1 redundancy for routers, ComtechEFDATAs satellite modems and RF equipment, as well as Inmarsat GAN/ISDN connectivity switch-in to backup the VSAT connectivity in the event of total outage of that link (such as deep fades at Ku-band locations or microwave interference at C-band locations).

The Dutch MoFA satellite network was deployed in 2004/05 and UltiSat continues to provide operations and maintenance support through the initial 5-year contract of this project.

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Chevron/Texaco African Satellite Network Infrastructure

Key Points:

• Large Pan-African network of greater than 40 nodes.
• Challenging terrain for installations across Africa.

UltiSat was awarded a subcontract in 2005 to design and deploy new satellite network infrastructure for Chevron/Texaco in support of its operations in Africa. The information transported across this network included voice and time-critical data applications. Locations covered by this network included multiple remote sites in Benin, Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Nigeria, Congo, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Zambia.

The satellite solution designed and deployed for Chevron/Texaco was based on the use of the iDirect TDM/TDMA platform, utilizing a relatively large C-band beam that covered all target sites within Africa. Broadband connectivity was provided to/from the remote sites leveraging the use of a more than 5Mbps forward (to remotes) TDM satellite carrier and a range of return (from remote) carriers from 256kbps to 1Mbps.

This advanced network architecture resulted in efficient and cost-effective use of the allocated satellite capacity, with assignments to the multitude of carriers being made dynamically “on the fly” based on real-time offered load at any of the sites in the network. Psi-Sys continues to support the Chevron/Texaco program today, offering extended warranty services, help desk and maintenance/callout support.

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Orange (formerly Equant) Africa Satellite Network

Key Points:

• Large Pan-African network of VSATs.
• Extremely high availability required (> 99.9%).

UltiSat was awarded a contract by the Equant satellite and wireless subsidiary of France Telecom to design, deploy and maintain the Equant Africa Satellite Network (EASN). Equant is the owner and operator of the largest multiple protocol label switching (MPLS) data network in the world. EASN comprises the backbone wide area network (WAN) portion of Equant’s global MPLS network and the solution deployed for this project required extremely high reliability (in excess of 99.9% performance) at each remote site.

The design of this network was premised on the use of 1:1 redundancy for all active elements deployed at a remote site (routers, satellite modems, BUCs and LNBs). To provide redundancy control for all of these elements on a cost-effective basis, a single box equipment monitoring and redundancy control solution based on UltiSat's own Master Station Controller (MSC) was implemented. Furthermore, a networked spectrum analyzer was integrated into each remote site kit to provide visibility into potential local “over the air” interference issues.

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SCB Bank Pan-African Broadband Project

Key Points:

Subcontract included all of SCB’s points of presence on the African continent, spanning 30 remote site locations in 14 different countries.

UltiSat was awarded a subcontract in 2006 to design, deploy and migrate a satellite network for Standard Chartered Band (SCB), a global financial institution with headquarters in London, England, UK. Information transported for SCB included voice, voice over IP (VoIP), and time-critical data applications (IP as well as legacy data protocols).

The challenges posed with this project were driven by the customer’s desire to migrate its existing ViaSat LinkWay mesh network on a legacy satellite to an iDirect-based star/mesh network on a different satellite, without loss of data during the transition. To deploy this network in a timely and cost-effective manner, UltiSat developed a migration approach that incorporated multiple antennas at each remote site location, one pointed to the legacy satellite, while a second was pointed to the new satellite. A complex IF combiner network and management system (based on UltiSat's MSC) was developed to allow multiple satellite modems to connect across multiple RF subsystems.

All remote sites were successfully migrated by UltiSat to the new network and satellite in less than six months. UltiSat continues to provide operations and maintenance support through the initial three-year base contract period of this project.

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