August 25, 2020 – ST Engineering iDirect, a company of ST Engineering North America, today announced that its long-term customer Paratus, a pan-African telecommunications group which provides satellite connectivity across Africa, has deployed its iDirect modems with marine antenna from manufacturer and integrator KNS, to provide reliable, high-speed connectivity to mining ships based in Guinea, West Africa. The vessels and their crew require constant and reliable communications to keep in permanent contact with their headquarters on land, and with other shipping vessels during operations at the Boffa port in Guinea, where 3G/4G connectivity is poor and internet services are limited. The ships were installed with the iDirect modem and KNS 1.2m Maritime Antenna Z12Mk2 in Shanghai, China, enabling bandwidth-intensive applications including video, email and WeChat to be run. Paratus remotely configured the modems and commissioned the antennas for the ships when they arrived in Boffa. Commissioning is completed with the ships being operational.