No African country can afford to be without efficient, reliable and cost-effective communications - and when it comes to mining, this is even more critical. For many countries, its minerals and other natural resources are the very foundation of their potential economic turnarounds. The mining industry therefore, is the lifeblood pumping through the heart of the country's economy. It is essential that this industry is well supported with the kind of effective communications infrastructure that ensures that the most value and profit is generated by every mining endeavour.

The challenge is that mines are often not able to access conventional communication methods because of the remote location of some of their operations. And when they can, the service angle on some of these systems can also be a problem. Satellite communications are often the only choice to provide the high quality, reliable connectivity needed to run commercial operations in remote regions.

Gateway Communications is the biggest private network operator in Sub-Saharan Africa and began providing services over a decade ago. At inception it was the only international communications company with local service engineers on the ground across Africa. Through the development of long term relationships with clients in the region Gateway Communications is now the largest communications provider for the mining sector in West Africa servicing approximately 50% of mines in the region. Clients include Barrick Gold Corp. Gold Fields Ghana Limited, Newmont Gold Ghana Ltd., Resolute, Redback Mining, Orezone (Burkina Faso) and Moolman LTA (in Mali and Guinea Conakry).

Dedicated VSAT connections are set up at most remote locations, while those within microwave range of Accra can be connected to the SAT 3 fibre optic cable, which travels from London down the West Coast of Africa to South Africa. From the Sat 3 cable the mines obtain secure connections into London and onwards to the rest of the world. This allows a direct link between each individual gold mine and their respective international corporate headquarters.

Only specialist companies like Gateway Communications offer solutions that can fit these challenging situations. For example Gateway Communications provides some African mines with telephone services which connect the mines to Gateway's own secure pan-African network and provides 'always-on' connections to all the world's major phone networks as well as the public internet.