With its new service, Telesat will become the first company to provide high-speed Internet access to users across all 13 Canadian provinces and territories, as well as the United States.

Responding to the news, Gilat shares were up 12.14% at $2.31 in early trade on Monday on the Nasdaq Market.

Under its agreement with Telesat, Spacenet will provide Gilat's 360E VSAT technology, comprised of a central hub system and thousands of remote terminals.

The 360E VSAT provides an always-on connection for instant access to the Internet and corporate intranet. With outbound data rates of up to 52.5 Mbps (on a shared basis) and inbound rates of up to 307.2 kbps, users can enjoy high-speed connectivity, Gilat says.

Typical customers for Telesat's new service will be businesses that require Internet access at ADSL-type speeds at locations that do not have access to wireline or cable-based broadband connectivity solutions. This market, comprised of many tens of thousands of locations across Canada alone, includes small to medium-size enterprises, large corporations, franchise businesses and government institutions.

Telesat Business Development vice president Dennis Billard said, "Because it is designed expressly for commercial broadband Internet connectivity, the Gilat 360E platform is ideally suited for our new service. In particular, we feel the platform's performance in supporting response-time-sensitive web applications - as well as its ability to efficiently and reliably handle unpredictable traffic characteristics - is extremely important to meeting the demands of businesses that depend on connectivity for mission-critical applications.''

INPUT Report: Federal Technology Spending To Reach $63 Billion in 2007

A new report published by Chantilly, Virginia-based INPUT, a provider of market research and analysis for technology vendors, indicates that federal government spending on information systems and services will increase from $37.1 billion this year to $63.3 billion by 2007. The report uses the president's fiscal 2003 budget request as its foundation and makes inferences about the specific areas where spending will occur to meet the government's objectives. INPUT said the large jump will come as a result of significantly increased homeland security and e-government spending. According to the report, federal agencies with the greatest spending on information systems and services include the Department of
Defense, the Department of the Treasury, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Justice. INPUT forecasted that these five departments will represent nearly 70% of federal spending on information systems and services in
2007.