US-based managed services provider MetTel wrapped up reseller agreements with Starlink to use its low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites to deliver broadband SD-WAN connectivity to government entities and enterprises across North America.

Ed Fox, CTO of MetTel, told Mobile World Live his company previously deployed the SD-WAN service to its customers with Starlink ahead of it going through the process of becoming an authorised reseller.

The service uses Starlink’s laser mesh network of LEO satellites to deliver the VMware-owned Velocloud SD-WAN service.

While it is currently only available in North America, Fox said MetTel plans to deploy it globally.

MetTel integrates Starlink’s space-based access paths into its existing terrestrial SD-WAN networks. The company uses its own cloud network with 20 data centres and points of presence (PoPs) to deliver SD-WAN as a fully managed service.

Customers are equipped with Starlink’s premium “Flat High Performance” kit that has GPS capability and a wider view of the sky than some of its other gear.

The downlink speed is listed as 100Mb/s, but Fox said it averages 220Mb/s in deployments. The upstream is in the high 20Mb/s to 30Mb/s range while latency checks in between 20 milliseconds and 40 milliseconds.

Fox said while initial deployments of the broadband SD-WAN service were in remote locations, there is keen interest across government, finance, construction, and environmental entities.

With more than 4 million active customers, Starlink can connect office buildings in major metro locations and disaster areas with SD-WAN. Fox said it was deployed during recent hurricanes in the US.

“We have commercial and federal customers asking us for the service across branch offices or new locations,” he said. “Some of our large customers have thousands and thousands of locations so that they want one package and one network to build and work with.”

Once the Starlink gear is installed, MetTel uses a POTs transformation device that allows it to support fire and burglar alarms to help companies get their certificate of occupancy to move into buildings.

MetTel provides users with a portal view of the information it gets from Starlink while the satellite company also delivers its own portal with each kit.

“We’ve built a portal that’s integrated with SD-WAN and integrated with our POTS transformation devices,” Fox said. “We can roll up an executive overview and kind of an ROI snapshot for our enterprise and commercial customers.”

Fox noted MetTel can have the service up and running in a single day.

Roadmap
Fox said MetTel is currently working on a pilot with a US federal agency near one of the nation’s borders to provision the service with CBRS.

“They needed to be able to authenticate devices on the wireless network in remote locations,” he explained. “We built a case that can be wheeled on to an airplane and put in the overhead and opened up and connected to a power source or a really big battery.”

An antenna hangs off the back of the case to connect the CBRS service to MetTel’s mobile core via Starlink.

Previously to CBRS, it was using fixed wireless access for the uplink, but Fox noted it required “lots of antennas, lots of power, and multiple different SIMs to try to get service”.

“Once we started doing it with Starlink we figured out that we could now do this anywhere, anytime, and with the quickest applications,” he said.