Iridium Communications Inc.’s Iridium Certus 200 service is now commercially available for maritime, land mobile, and government markets, offering exceptional performance-to-value for maritime and land-mobile applications, with aviation solutions targeting late 2021.
Iridium Certus is an advanced L-band broadband solution, offering the flexibility to scale device speeds, sizes and power requirements both up and down based on the needs of the end-user. Made possible by the upgraded Iridium satellite constellation, the Iridium Certus service goes beyond serving solely as a connectivity solution. It provides a platform for the company’s partners to develop specialized broadband, midband and narrowband applications made possible by Iridium’s crosslinked L-band network.
Iridium Certus 200 offers uncompressed transmission speeds up to 176 Kbps and up to three high-quality voice lines through a small, lightweight and cost-effective antenna, unlike competing L-band broadband services that require a large antenna dome. Iridium Certus 200 can serve customers anywhere in the world at a reasonable price point.
The first products available for the Iridium Certus 200 service class are the Thales VesseLINK 200 for maritime and Thales MissionLINK 200 for land-based applications. The Lars Thrane LT-4200 maritime terminal will be introduced to the market in early 2022, as well as multiple Iridium Certus 200 aviation terminals, targeting both late 2021 and early 2022.
For use in the maritime industry, Iridium Certus 200 is designed for leisure yachts, fishing vessels, autonomous watercraft, and all manner of workboats such as tugboats, ferries, dredgers, and patrol boats. The service can cost effectively support a variety of connected ship applications including vessel monitoring systems, Internet of Things (IoT) and sensor data collection and transmission, and supports ship business applications like web browsing, email, voice calling and chat functions. Iridium Certus 200 is ideal for primary vessel communications needs, can serve as a VSAT companion solution and has been designed for future GMDSS service capability. The small form-factor, lightweight equipment has no moving parts, ensuring easy installation, low-maintenance and reliability, giving mariners affordability of both service and equipment.
In the land mobile market, Iridium Certus 200 can support both mobile and fixed site applications and can serve a variety of applications for business continuity, public safety, utilities, global governments and more. The service is ideal for field workforce management for fleets, remote asset control requiring IP connectivity, voice communications, and added redundancy for VSAT systems as a failover for out of band management and back-up connectivity.
The Thales MissionLINK 200’s user-friendly interface can be managed from a smartphone or tablet and enables critical applications that can be customized to operate on primary VSAT or cellular networks and automatically switch to Iridium satellite service when needed with built-in network routing.
With the Thales MissionLINK 200, Iridium Certus 200 for land mobile applications is set to make it more cost-effective for businesses to communicate, conduct business, and connect worldwide through satcom.
Targeting introduction in late 2021 and early 2022, Iridium Certus 200 aviation terminals will support business, commercial, government and general aviation aircraft, including rotorcraft. Featuring low-profile, highly reliable L-band antennas and lightweight terminals, the service will enable high-quality voice, IP data, email and web browsing.
Iridium Certus aviation safety services certification is currently in development, and additional information on its status will be made available in the coming weeks.
“Iridium Certus is a powerful connectivity platform, providing the flexibility for our partners to develop specialized terminals that enhance different capabilities across all industries,” says Bryan Hartin, executive vice president, sales and marketing, Iridium. “Iridium Certus 200 fills an important gap in our broadband portfolio, offering a more affordable product and service class, with reliable connectivity that will expand to more markets.”
