Inmarsat FleetBroadband vs Iridium OpenPort

Panbo – The Marine Electronics Blog has an excellent post comparing Inmarsat FleetBroadband and Iridium OpenPort equipment and services in real time boating conditions. These two mobile satellite solutions, offering high-speed Internet and voice services, are relatively new on the marine market that makes this review even more valuable. Panbo’s authors has been using both systems on one boat sailing from Northeast US to New Zealand and provided detailed accounts on speed of data transfer, voice quality, service up-time, power usage and use of data compression software.

With the price tag of around $5,000 (installation and airtime not included), both FleetBroadband (150-series) and OpenPort can be an affordable but robust option to satisfy communication requirements and tighter budgets of smaller leisure boats and fishing operators.

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BGAN Explorer 727 firmware update

Inmarsat released an update to the firmware (Ver. 1.10) for its BGAN Explorer 727 satellite terminal. All users are recommended to update their terminals.

Inmarsat launches ISatPhone

We have another (an quite powerful!) player in the satellite handheld phone business: Inmarsat. Today the UK-based satellite operator and a provider of maritime and portable high-speed Internet data services has unveiled the ISatPhone, its version of the mobile satellite voice service already provided by competitors Iridium, Thuraya and Globalstar. The satellite phone (manufactured by Solectron) will use the capacity of the new Inmarsat I-4 satellite and provide voice and rudimentary data service in parts of Africa, Asia and Australia. Nothing fancy in the legacy handset itself (compared to the new fancy Thuraya phones), which has been inherited from AcES, but Inmarsat is already working on design of a new handset.

Interested? Get a phone or request more info!

Who can use Inmarsat BGAN

Military Information Technology Online takes a look at various applications of the Inmarsat BGAN products and services. Specific attention is paid to secure and emergency communications in the military and business sgement.

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A new name in the satphone business?

Well, not so new… at least for the satellite industry. For the first time in its history, Inmarsat plc, a UK-based global satellite operator, announced its plans to offer a handheld satellite phone and voice calls in early 2007. For almost 30 years of its history, Inmarsat has been known mostly for its marine-based and high-speed data solutions.

In partnership with ACeS Ltd., an Asian regional mobile satellite operator, Inmarsat will offer an Ericsson-made handheld satellite phone (based on ACeS R190) and voice calls at rates from 25 cents to $1 per minute. The new system will use three new Inmarsat GEO satellites and, possibly, the older ACeS Garuda 1 satellite.

This move puts Inmarsat in direct competition with other two major players: Thuraya and Iridium and will likely result in lower prices for equipment and voice calls, which even now  rarely exceed $1 per minute.

The new venture is the next step in Inmarsat’s mobile line of products. In late 2005, the company introduced the BGAN service, featuring laptop-sized satellite modems and data transfers of up to 492 Kbps. Inmarsat is keen to use ACeS established distribution channels to market the BGAN products on the Asian markets.

As Gulfnews.com reports, the satellite phone market is a $350 million business with 600,000 subscribers.