October 13, 2022 – The Carrier and Wholesale Services (C&WS) division of e& (formerly known as Etisalat Group) today announced its partnership with Microsoft and SES to host the co-located SES O3b mPOWER and Microsoft ground station at Ras Al Khaimah. The first O3b mPOWER ground station in the region will facilitate one-hop connectivity to the cloud from remote sites so that customers can optimize their global business operations smoothly. The partnership will also enable companies – regardless of their location – to accelerate their digitalization plans while unlocking more value for the businesses. This trio partnership will mean that e& network services can be easily connected and extended via SES’s second-generation medium earth orbit (MEO) constellation – O3b mPOWER – which aims to deliver high-speed connectivity services from tens of megabits to multiple gigabits per second to one site. The one-hop connectivity to Azure Cloud and SES’s satellite network also enables simplicity, flexibility but also minimizes any network latency delays. The ground station at Ras Al Khaimah is one of the eight initial O3b mPOWER gateway sites which will support both customer data services and the TTC (Telemetry, Tracking and Control) control of the satellite system.