Hughes is leading the VAST market in India with 32.19 percent market share in Q1 2011-12.

The VSAT installed base of Hughes in Indian telecom market was 46,900 units in Q1 2011-12 against 43,870 in Q4 2010-11, growing at 6.9 percent.

Hughes Communication with subscriber base of 46,900 has attained highest market share, shifting Bharti Airtel from the top position to 2nd position, according to TRAI data.

Hughes’s near competitor Bharti Airtel has 30.88 percent market share in VSAT segment. Bharti Airtel’s installed VSAT base grew to 44,981 units in Q1 2011-12 from 44,052 units in Q4 2010-11.

HCL Comnet is in the third position with 16.73 percent market share. HCL Comnet posted 4.15 percent decrease to 24,573 units in Q1 2011-12.

The total number of VSAT subscribers increased to 145689 at the end of June 2011. Net additions during the quarter were 4,980, clocking growth of 3.54 percent.

Recently, Hughes Communication announced that it bagged an order to connect 2500 locations in the North-East, J&K, Himachal Pradesh and Uttrakhand through broadband internet under National e-Governance Plan (NeGP).

The contract has been awarded to them by CSC e-Governance Services India, on behalf of the Department of Information Technology, through a tender process. Hughes will supply, install and commission the VSATs terminals in most difficult parts of India where other modes of delivering broadband services are not available.

The main objective of this project is to make available broadband access to intenet and other digital services available to the un-served users over satellite using latest standards and technologies like DVB S2 with ACM.

By Baburajan K