Iridium® Satellite reported on 11 June that its mobile satellite services business in the maritime sector continues to show steady growth with the number of subscribers up 17 per cent over the same time last year. Maritime traffic through the satellite network is growing at an annual rate of 12 per cent.
The number of ships using Iridium’s prepaid Crew Calling service increased by 22 per cent, year over year, buoyed by the increasing number of shipowners and management companies to switch to Iridium last year.
“Iridium’s value proposition is unique in the maritime industry,” said Greg Ewert, executive vice president of Iridium Satellite. “It is the only mobile satellite service offering ubiquitous pole-to-pole coverage with no service gaps anywhere on the planet. We continue to increase our market share in this sector with service offerings tailored to the specific requirements of shipowners and commercial fishing fleets, including cost-effective voice and data, prepaid scratch cards for crew calling, crew email, SMS instant messaging, ship security alert systems (SSAS), circuit-switched data and short-burst data.”
“Data service is the major driver of our growth in the maritime market, increasing 28 per cent year over year,” said Ewert. “While the overall volume of data traffic is less than one-half of voice traffic, it is growing seven times faster.”
“To meet the increasing demand for higher-volume ship-to-shore data capabilities, Iridium will introduce an enhanced bandwidth data service in 2008,” said Ewert. “We are also introducing at Nor-Shipping 2007 a new field-tested satellite fax service designed for the marine market. Other growth opportunities include long-range information and tracking, vessel traffic and monitoring, container tracking and security.”
“We also hope to see Iridium accepted as an alternative form of communications for the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS),” Ewert added.
Earlier this year, the company announced its Iridium NEXT initiative to launch an aggressive R&D program to define and develop a new satellite constellation. Iridium envisions an IP-based broadband network that will leverage new satellite and wireless technologies to provide powerful new devices and services for commercial and government users. The next-generation satellite constellation will come into service in 2016. In the meantime, Iridium is taking steps to enhance and improve the reliability and robustness of the existing satellite constellation. A new Iridium gateway in China will come into service by the end of this year, and a new telemetry, tracking and command/control station is being opened in Norway.