Ramona Adams
Iridium has unveiled the next batch of six companies that will offer the Iridium Certus satellite broadband service for ground-based mobile operations beginning mid-2018.
Certus is powered by the Iridium NEXT satellite constellation and will be integrated with Thales‘ MissionLINK terminal to support the off-the-grid missions of public safety, utility, oil and gas, military and non-government customers, Iridium said Tuesday.
The integrated offering is designed to address internet, phone and e-mail requirements as well as aid real-time vehicle tracking and transmission of telematics information.
The new group of service providers includes Globalsat, IEC Telecom, Marlink, McQ, Pivotel and Tesam Argentina S.A.
The latest batch adds to the first six Certus service providers that Iridium introduced in February, bringing the total number of Certus vendors to 12.
Iridium plans to unveil additional service providers in the next weeks.
“Starting this month, we will transition to field customer trials and commence high-rate production of our terminals in order to meet the demand of orders that we have already received.” said Brian Aziz, director of satcom solutions for Thales’ defense and security business.
Aziz added that Thales expects Iridium to certify the MissionLink terminal in April.
MissionLink will initially work to deliver speeds of 352 kilobits per second, then offer an upgrade to 704 kbps through a firmware update.
