Hughes completes VSAT deployment for 10K ATMs in Finmin proj

VSAT service provider Hughes Communications India (HCIL) today said that it has completed deployment VSATs for 10,000 ATMs under a project being executed by the Ministry of Finance (MoF).
"India is an under-penetrated ATM market with only 98 ATMs for every 10 lakh of population (1 million). Our focused approach and effort towards financial inclusion helped reach this milestone of 10,000 operational VSATs for MoF,"HCIL's Enterprise Business Head Shivaji Chatterjee said in a statement.
VSAT stands for "Very Small Aperture Terminal", which is a very small satellite transmitting and receiving station.
ATMs are connected through Integrated Services Digital Network, Leased Line and VSAT to the accounting platform of the bank through ATM switches.

The company has to deploy total of about 27,000 VSATs for ATMs by September 2014 out of which it has shipped 14,000 units.
Hughes also announced that is has deployed VSAT support for 500 white label ATMs in 2013 across various states such as Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh.
The MoF project is part of one of the largest outsourcing deals in the financial sector, under which the ministry and a consortium of all public sector banks of India have contracted with nine different multi service providers to install and manage a total of 63,000 off-site and on-site ATMs across urban and rural India for an eight-year period.

On completion, this initiative is expected to increase India's ATM density by over 60 percent, the statement said.