Mining is the most dynamic industry sector and main source of foreign exchange in Guinea, a 245,857 km2 country located in West Africa, with a population of roughly 10 million. Mineral resources account for over 85% of the country's exports and 25% of its GDP. In addition to gold and diamonds, the country holds 30% of the world's Bauxite reserves, and two unexploited world-class iron ore deposits in the South East of the Country.

The Guinea Iron Ore deposits are amongst the very last ones of this quality known in the world. Société des Mines de Fer de Guinée (SMFG), a BHP-Billiton and Newmont consortium, is focused on developing the deposits around Mount Nimba, which is expected to be a Tier 1 mining operation, estimated to get into production within the next decade at an annual rate exceeding 20 Mtpa.

When the decision was made in April 2009 to proceed further with the deposits development, SMFG turned to Spidersat Communications for the design, implementation, commissioning and maintenance of their communications system at Mount Nimba and Diecke exploration camp. Fully dedicated, C-Band, World Connect VSAT solutions were deployed at both locations in July 2009. In addition to VPN, email and internet connectivity, Spidersat provides SMFG with a state of the art Voice over IP solution for free calls between the two locations and low cost, carrier grade, international voice calls. Carrier-grade wireless technologies reticulate access to the Internet throughout the site. Content Management and Bandwidth Optimization devices are deployed to
ensure bandwidth is available to critical business applications and the VoIP system on demand.

"The main challenges at both Nimba and Diecke are logistics and good communications, former for obvious reasons of the remoteness of both sites and the latter as a result of the modern information age where companies rely on rapid information exchange and team decision making - based on virtual private networks" comments Ciaran Halpin, Operations Manager at BHP Billiton. "The Spidersat installations have helped tackle both aspects and have also provided reliable communications for site based employees to contact family members both within Guinea and overseas."

Ciaran Halpin adds: "We chose Spidersat Communications because of their Africa-centric organization and their familiarity with the difficulties with working in remote sites - particularly in this part of the world. Their tender was also the most competitive for the systems installed. The system is running well and there have been no complaints."

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