Iridium Communications has introduced the first group of six companies that will provide ground-based mobile services through its Iridium Certus broadband offering by mid-2018.
The company said Wednesday Iridium Certus is powered by the Iridium NEXT satellite constellation and is designed to provide mobile communications services such as voice, cellular data, satellite internet and land mobile radio support.
The initial land-based mobile service providers for Iridium Certus are Applied Satellite Technology, Arion Communication, Kaigai Communication, MVS USA, Network Innovations US and Spacenet.
Josh Miner, executive director of land-mobile business line at Iridium, said the company will integrate Iridium Certus with Thales’ MissionLINK satellite terminal in order to help mobile government, military and enterprise users to automatically transition between cellular and satellite service.
Iridium plans to announce additional mobile land-based service providers in the next few months and perform four more Iridium NEXT satellite launches in the first two quarters of 2018.