A toast to satellite broadband

The hills of Tuscany, where Marchesi de’ Frescobaldi has produced world renowned wine for seven centuries, are famed for their timeless beauty, but they’re a curse to modern communications links.

For CEO, Giovanni Geddes da Filicaja, it has hampered the management of the business. Only modern technology can enable him to keep in contact with Frescobaldi’s scattered estates and production centres but ADSL cannot reach into the rural locations, and even contact by landline telephone is prone to interruption by storms.

“Internet technology is now the basis of business, even in a traditional sector such as ours,” says Geddes da Filicaja, “but the landscape in which we operate was a communications hurdle”.

So Geddes da Filicaja selected ASTRA2Connect for installation in his own Tuscan home. Up and running a few days later, ASTRA2Connect has replaced his inadequate 56Kb dial-up connection with reliable always-on 1Mb broadband connectivity and VoIP telephone.

“Now I can work without obstacles - organize meetings and appointments, use e-mail and company resources, and visit websites quickly,” says Geddes da Filicaja.

“Astra2Connect has significantly improved my way of working and way of managing my time and resources. Thanks to ASTRA2Connect, I can count on a reliable Internet and telephone system.”

Giovanni Geddes da Filicaja

Sowing the seeds of the future

Flevopolder in the Netherlands is a traditional, rural area with few cable connections and many residents too far from their local telephone exchange for ADSL broadband Internet access. Farmer, Bauke Jan Bierma from Zeewolde knows the problem well. His business needs the Internet for weather forecasts and other agricultural information, and to communicate with the government departments, but he’s had to make do with a slow landline connection.

“With the prehistoric dial-up connection, it was impossible for me to log on to the Ministry of Agriculture,” says Bierma. “It was also a great problem to send my information online to the Office of Regulation – I always had to send my declarations by post.”

Installation of an ASTRA2Connect dish and modem has changed all that. The always-on, high speed Internet connection has revolutionised Bierma’s business. “Finally, I can settle things much faster online and that saves me lots of paperwork,” he says. “It’s such a blessing!”

“If you are still using the outdated dial-up connection, I would immediately get an ASTRA2Connect terminal. The investment pays for itself two or three times over.”

Bauke Jan Bierma