Iridium to Expand its Reach as a Global Alternative PNT Service with Acquisition of Market Leader Satelles 

March 4, 2024

Iridium Communications Inc. announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire Satelles, Inc., the leader in highly secure satellite-based time and location services that complement and protect GPS and other GNSS-reliant systems. The service, named Satellite Time and Location (STL), is an easy-to-adopt, highly secure solution that increases the efficiency and reliability of timing systems for digital infrastructure like 5G base stations, data centers, and other critical infrastructure and protects against GNSS vulnerabilities using low-cost hardware that doesn’t require outdoor antennas. This acquisition continues Iridium’s philosophy of investing in differentiating technologies uniquely suited to its network that significantly outperform competing solutions. 

The market for assured Positioning Navigation and Timing (PNT) services, estimated to reach $3.5 billion in 2032, is evolving to require integrated small-form-factor devices instead of the server rack-size solutions connected to outdoor GPS antennas that are available today. Time synchronization and location data play an important role in the global economy, particularly in the commercial sector for major industries supported by critical infrastructure, such as financial services, telecommunications, cyber security, and transportation. These industries and others rely on an estimated 10,000 data centers globally and their hundreds of millions of data processing and storage servers. Each of these servers requires time synchronization and can benefit from the in-server room efficiency and resilience delivered by Iridium STL.