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Iridium Certus 100 Service Launches with Partner Products for Land, Sea, Air and Industrial IoT

November 10, 2021

Iridium Communications Inc. announced that its Iridium Certus® 100 “midband” service is commercially available for maritime, land mobile, IoT, aviation and government customers. Iridium Certus 100 provides a unique blend of capabilities for satellite connectivity, enabling small, low-profile antennas and battery-powered devices designed for maximum mobility, but with IP data speeds that efficiently support sending important pictures, emails and other vital information from remote places.

Iridium Certus 100 debuts with several new Iridium Connected® partner products and is designed to address market demand for new satcom solutions requiring small form factor and battery or line-powered mobile equipment, capable of two-way IP data and high-quality voice services. No other satellite operator can provide this range of capabilities over the whole planet, enabling new classes of connected products.

To date, Iridium has already certified over a dozen new partner-built products that will provide weather-resilient connections up to 88 Kbps, with more in development. Iridium Certus 100 products are well suited for autonomous vehicles like unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs), unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) and unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), remote monitoring of facilities or equipment, and even new personal communications devices that include messaging, photos and low-resolution video. The small, handheld portability of the new equipment means many devices can be battery powered or integrated as an onboard communications system for vessels, aircraft and connected vehicles.

“Our new Iridium Certus 100 midband service is designed for applications that are agile, remote, and need more throughput than our traditional narrowband offerings, but don’t demand the speeds or larger, heavier antennas used in our popular Iridium Certus broadband solutions,” said Iridium CEO Matt Desch. “The impressive number of new products coming to market from our partners tells us that we’re addressing an important new capability that has never been addressed by satellite operators before.”

Among the first products available are the SkyLink by Blue Sky Network and LT-4100 by Lars Thrane.  SkyLink is a dual-mode data management solution for land, air, sea, and IoT applications, which has already been chosen for integration into UAV and USV systems.  Available in each of the four mentioned vertical configurations, SkyLink is an adaptive solution with efficient size, weight and power features, making it ideal for mid-sized vessels, vehicles, remote monitoring stations, industrial IoT, unmanned systems, and government and military aviation.