GERMANTOWN, Maryland, July 8 /PRNewswire/ --

- Five-Year Contract with Spain's Leading Gaming Technology Company Includes Redundant HN System and over 2800 Broadband Routers

Hughes Network Systems, LLC (HUGHES), the global leader in broadband satellite network solutions and services, today announced that Sistemas Tecnicos de Loterias del Estado (STL) has awarded its wholly owned subsidiary, HNS Ltd., a contract to provide a geographically redundant HN System Network Operations Center (NOC), 2800 HN7700S broadband satellite routers, and support/maintenance services for five years. STL provides information technology and telecommunications services to the Entidad Publico Empresarial Loterias y Apuestas del Estado Espanol (LAE), the Spanish state lottery authority. Handling over two million lottery transactions per year, STL is Spain's leading gaming technology and telecommunications company.

"We issued an RFP in order to find the most suitable communications solution for our lower volume, more remote point-of-sales sites," said Alfonso Pedro Fernandez Garcia, STL's Director of Communications and New Sales Channels. "We evaluated mobile communications, DSL, and satellite IP technologies, and from 15 proposals concluded that the best balance among Quality of Service (QoS) assurance, cost per transaction, and coverage would be provided by a satellite IP solution. We chose the HN System from Hughes because of the capabilities of the HN7700S platform and our long-standing relationship with Hughes. As we are migrating from X.25 to pure IP, we needed the latest, state-of-the-art equipment which will enable us to provide better service quality and enable future broadband applications."

"This agreement builds upon our successful 10 year relationship with STL and is evidence of the strategic importance of the lottery sector to Hughes and our leadership in serving it, following major contracts with GTECH in the US and Camelot in the UK," said Luigi Pagni, vice president, Sales and Marketing of Hughes Europe. "STL will now enjoy the benefits of our latest HN System platform which is based on the world's most widely deployed standard, IPoS/DVBS2 with ACM (adaptive coding modulation), yielding higher throughputs and more efficient bandwidth utilization."

Installation of the HN System NOCs began in May and of the remote satellite terminals shortly thereafter, with rollout scheduled to be completed in the first quarter of 2009.

About Sistemas Tecnicos de Loterias del Estado

Sistemas Tecnicos de Loterias del Estado S.A. (STL), headquartered in Madrid, was formed in 1988 to provide information technology and telecommunciations services to the Entidad Publico Empresarial Loterias y Apuestas del Estado Espanol, the Spanish state lottery authority. Over the years, STL has maintained and updated its infrastructure and applications, concentrating on updating equipment and on the design and development of new solutions. Among STL's strategies is to design and develop management systems certified by entities of recognized prestige. Thus, STL has created a Quality Management System certified by AENOR, in accordance with the corresponding ISO standard and has been awarded the World Lottery Association security qualification.

For additional information, please visit www.stl.es/web/en/portada.

About Hughes Network Systems

Hughes Network Systems, LLC (HUGHES) is the global leader in providing broadband satellite networks and services for large enterprises, governments, small businesses, and consumers. HughesNet(R) encompasses all broadband solutions and managed services from Hughes, bridging the best of satellite and terrestrial technologies. Its broadband satellite products are based on global standards approved by the TIA, ETSI and ITU standards organizations, including IPoS/DVB-S2, RSM-A and GMR-1. To date, Hughes has shipped more than 1.5 million systems to customers in over 100 countries.

Headquartered outside Washington, D.C., in Germantown, Maryland, USA, Hughes maintains sales and support offices worldwide. Hughes is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hughes Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: HUGH). For additional information, please visit www.hughes.com.

(C)2008 Hughes Network Systems, LLC. Hughes and HughesNet are registered trademarks of Hughes Network Systems, LLC.

Web site: http://www.hughes.com http://www.stl.es/web/en/portada

Judy Blake of Hughes Network Systems, +1-301-601-7330, judy.blake@hughes.com; or Roberta Girasole of Hughes Europe, +39-06-844-06138, r.girasole@eu.hns.com