“The contract is a milestone in the task of establishing the global verification regime envisioned by the Treaty” said the Executive Secretary of CTBTO PrepCom, Wolfgang Hoffmann, at today´s signing ceremony, three days before the second anniversary of the Treaty´s adoption.

For the next 10 years, the international partnership will provide turnkey services covering the design, installation, management, operation and maintenance of a complex global network of very small aperture satellite terminals (VSAT). These will ensure the swift and secure transport of data between 337 worldwide monitoring facilities, the International Data Centre at Vienna and the Treaty´s signatory States (currently 150).

The global VSAT network will link monitoring stations from Antarctica to Greenland, and in places as far apart as, for instance, the Galapagos Islands, Dar es Salaam, Chittagong and Okinawa. Most of the stations are in remote locations often exposed to extreme temperatures and severe weather conditions. The network will have to provide effective error-free transport of up to 11.4 gigabytes of data daily within five seconds of detecting and processing signals from events. It will also have to operate for 99.5 per cent of the time over 365 days a year and be capable of functioning in temperatures between -40 and 60 degrees Celsius and during wind speeds of up to 100 kilometers an hour. The network will deploy the latest communications technology and will itself be continuously monitored and adjusted to ensure continuous high performance and protection from unauthorized access.