Growth Continues With MilSegement for Iridium

Iridium Satellite continues to relish the continued growth in the firm’s military sector business—they know have cumulative Department of Defense (DoD) subscribers reaching 31,000. Military traffic through Iridium’s satellite network is up more than nine percent (an increase of almost 10 percent over last year). This growth is 300 percent more than what Iridium had planned for this market segment at the start of the year. In the past year, Iridium has introduced or enhanced military applications, including the introduction of the 9601 data modem, to the U.S. DoD through its contract with the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). Based on the company’s short-burst data (SBD) messaging service, this modem is currently being used by the DoD Services, as well as many agencies in the Department of Homeland Security, for asset tracking/management and force protection.




Iridium also has participated extensively in testing its Netted Iridium service with the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) Warfighting Lab. Netted Iridium is a push-to-talk voice and data communications service. It offers a reliable, rapidly deployable, over-the-horizon communications solution for the military and first responder communities. Plus, Iridium is working with Boeing on an effort called iGPS, an initiative the U.S. government is looking at that uses the Iridium system to augment GPS signals to provide more robust anti-jam and interference protection, improved operations in restrictive environments, enhanced availability and extremely high accuracy. Technical trials are underway and have so far demonstrated the capability for iGPS to provide centimeter-level position accuracy, a significant improvement over current GPS capabilities. Boeing and Iridium are partnering to demonstrate initial capabilities of the system to the DoD by 2010—Bethesda, Maryland