Australian mobile firm claims world-first for native SMS over satellite NTN

Australian mobile network specialist Omnitouch and US satellite data provider Skylo have claimed a world-ϐirst with a successful trial of non-terrestrial network-enabled send and receipt of native SMS.

Messages were sent between Skylo’s California-based ofϐice and standard mobile phones in Australia, India, Finland, and the United States in a proof of concept demonstration with Omnitouch, the Victorian based niche integra[1]tor. Omnitouch has designed and operates mobile networks in such discrete geographies as Christmas Island, Norfolk Islands and the Aleutian archipelago.

The demonstration combined standard mobile SIM cards and the Skylo 3GPP Rel-17 standards-based network.

“We set up standard roaming between the Omnitouch mo[1]bile core in Sydney and the Skylo core network in the US and Europe, like we would for any other operator we’re roaming with, then posted out a bunch of SIMs to the different Skylo folks around the globe, who put our SIMs into their devices and were able to send SMS as if they were inside our coverage, except they were roaming onto Skylo’s satellite service,” said Omnitouch founder and director Nick Jones.

“The home subscriber server in this case is based in Sydney, the one that we have for Norfolk, and we’ve built a link over a roaming hub, which is a cross connect essentially, into the Skylo network, and then the Skylo Mobility Management Entity. When the Omnitouch SIM tries to connect to the Skylo network, the Skylo network sends a request to the HSS in Sydney, which authenticates the SIM and then, boom, off we go.”

Skylo is a Californian-based ϐirm formed by Stanford and MIT aerospace specialists which is deploying a standards-based global messaging and data network using GEOsats. The firm has partnered with satellite providers including Inmarsat and ViaSat, and last month, raised US$37 million in investment from Intel Capital, Innovation Endeavors and others.

Jones told CommsDay that while LEOsats attracted all the headlines, GEOsats were a perfectly viable and attractive medium for the service. “There’s a long track record right the way from Telstar and Sputnik of this being a proven technology,” Jones said.

“Nothing’s being launched to support this. No one’s putting up rockets, nothing’s going to blow up on a launch pad, it’s already there. It’s using existing satellites from existing satellite providers.”

“We’re finding more capacities freed up on geostationary links as well,” he observed, alluding to the migration of usage to LEOsat and terrestrial wireless networks as their coverage increases.

While the initial proof of concept is confined to SMS, Jones said this should not be underrated. “It’s not high throughput data, but for a lot of applications, if the cell tow[1]er is out and you only have SMS, or if you’re somewhere where there isn’t coverage, SMS can still make a whole world of difference. It’s something that we’re pretty excited about.”

As for Omnitouch, Jones said the SMS functionality would be pow[1]erful for mobile sub[1]scribers on its own net[1]works. “Literally, if you just want to go on a re[1]ally long ϐishing trip you’ll be covered,” he joked to CommsDay.

Omnitouch positions itself as a “mobile network-as-a-service provider.”

“This was born out of the fact that we saw lots of different operators saying, we’ve taken parts from vendor X, Y and Z, can someone stitch it together Over time we just ended up creating all the different components that we needed in a tried and tested fashion that we knew scaled to meet the needs of these operators and that we could offer as a turnkey, encompassing solution from everything, from the RAN, which we partner with Nokia for, to the core and the charging that we develop, to the SIM cards, to the connections, to the international roaming hubs,” Jones said. “We provide a turnkey solution for everything that you need to run a mobile network.”

This included the CiFi network in Christmas Island and the Norfone mobile network currently being deployed in Norfolk Island, as well as network design and deployment for Optimera, in the Aleutian Islands, and what Jones estimated is a total of some 30 niche island networks all up.

The Christmas and Norfolk Island networks have been partly funded by Federal Government’s Regional Connectivity Program funds.

“Weird cellular is probably a good description of what we do,” Jones quipped.

“Cellular where no one else will go.”

Grahame Lynch, CommsDay

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