An event that was organized by Globalsat Chile, the local affiliate of the Globalsat Group, took place at the W Hotel Convention Center, where an interested audience was presented with the array of services which will be enabled by the new satellites. The audience was also told of the Iridium NEXT constellation and Iridium Certus services in Chile.
Representatives of the Chilean Navy, Directemar, SHOA, Army, emergency services and businesses were among the many attendees that learned about the evolution of the Iridium® NEXT constellation and the new functionality that will be provided thanks to its full renovation.
This functionality is of particular interest in countries like Chile, where emergencies caused by natural disasters often take telecommunications services to their limits. Iridium is already known for its global voice service which is often used to save lives and infrastructure. Iridium Certussm will provide similar ubiquity and dependability for data services.
One Iridium Certus mode will provide global pole-to-pole Internet access at speed of up to 1.4Mbps, through end-user terminals which will not require pointing, can be carried in a suitcase or backpack and are ready to operate anywhere on the planet, including the whole Antarctic continent.
Silvina Graziadio, director of marketing and business development at Globalsat Group said: “Our close relationship with Iridium, now spanning more than 18 years, allows thousands of our customers to count on us for providing communications where and when other means are not available. We are pleased to accompany Iridium in the presentation of its technological evolution, which increments the availability of existing services and allows more bandwidth, something many of our clients are looking forward to.”
Graziadio added: “Our ample Pan-American presence, the value we add through local experience, free access through a short code to customer support and the work we have done in multiple countries to comply with all regulatory requisites are some of the reasons why Iridium counts on us to facilitate market access throughout the western hemisphere.”
Bryan Hartin, executive vice president sales and marketing at Iridium stated that "Latin America / South America is an important market for Iridium across maritime, land mobile, aviation and IoT. Globalsat Group is able to bring partners and customers from across the spectrum and they have expertise in each of those lines of business, so as we introduce Iridium Certus we are going to rely on Globalsat Group to be a very important partner here in Latin America.”
Iridium NEXT
The launch of Iridium's second generation satellites began on January 14. This date marked the beginning of the largest satellite renewal campaign in history, a double-feat considering that Iridium already operates the largest constellation ever put into space. As of this writing, 8 of the 10 new satellites launched in January are already in their orbital slots and providing services to users, after seamless in-orbit transitions which did not cause service interruption to users.
The next launch of 10 new satellites is planned for mid-june, and will be followed by a series of similar launches until the Iridium NEXT is fully deployed by 2018.