Spacenet, a subsidiary of Gilat Satellite Networks (News - Alert) and a provider of managed networks and broadband solutions, has been awarded federal grant funding from the Rural Utility Service (RUS) under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

With this grant, the company expects to provide broadband service to rural unserved markets in Alaska and Hawaii via its “StarBand Open Skies” initiative. “This grant award is great news for customers in Alaska and Hawaii that need access to affordable broadband Internet services,” said Andreas Georghiou, CEO at Spacenet.

Spacenet said that it plans to offer its StarBand broadband-over-satellite service to these regions for $0 down, including equipment and standard installation, and an entry-level monthly service fee of $50.

Georghiou said that RUS recognized the difficulty and unique challenges in deploying service in these regions and took appropriate measures to address them. First they increased the subsidy, and second they selected the StarBand team to implement it.

On custom versions of its Nova 1000 and 1500 products, StarBand is basing its StarBand Open Skies service offerings for Alaska and Hawaii. The two packages exceed the performance requirements set forth by the RUS for this program.

Company officials said that the Nova 1000 service provides download speeds of up to 1 Mbps and upload speeds of 200 Kbps, while Nova 1500 service offers download speeds of up to 1.5 Mbps and upload speeds of 256 Kbps.

Moreover, both services also offer value added features such as 10 free hours of dial access per month for backup or traveling; virus protection; spam filtering; access to the StarBand Member Portal powered by Google (News - Alert); 24X7 online support; and up to 15 email accounts.

Earlier this month, Spacenet introduced a new offer, called StarBundle, for its StarBand satellite Internet services.