The ‘smaller-than-a-matchbook device’ offers new ways for people and assets to make necessary, two-way connections reliably, in near real-time. Personnel tracking, mobile field monitoring, defence, research, search and rescue, remote sensing and even U.S. forces around the world are only some of the 9603 application areas.

This type of technology is already being actively incorporated into products, with speculative launch dates being considered as early as June of this year, and we can understand this anticipation. Joel Thompson, vice president of product management at Iridium stated that with this device, “Iridium is disrupting the global M2M market […] through our innovative approaches to reduce the size of our data and voice/data modules.” We do not hesitate to agree and will be keeping a watchful eye on the progress of this and other devices in the near future.

We’ve just come across an alternative view from the Editor of Fierce Wireless (based on research from Vurrent Analysis) that suggests that, contrary to the feverish speculation that we see every week, the M2M market (at least from an operator’s perspective) is not accelerating at the pace that many of us predicted. While we have to be mindful that many people were predicting some truly  astronomical, pie-in-the-sky market growth, the point still remains; actual growth for many of the major operators is yet to match up with the numbers they had on their PowerPoints and Excel spreadsheets in 2009.

The article points out that some of this may be due to the (dare we say complacent?) approach to the M2M market that many of the larger operators have had until now. Their belief that their global footprint with its global connectivity will buy market share is proving wrong as smaller, more agile operators eat into their market share. In our view, the M2M market is an inherently diverse and rapidly changing place that requires solutions providers who can think on their feet and work in partnership with their clients. This is why smaller players are gaining ground. They can offer an agile, tailored solution to customer requirements and deal with the complexity inherent in every project.

A surge in demand from Asia, Latin America and the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions means that the overall growth in satellite capacity for the oil and gas sector is likely to outstrip all but the most bullish recent forecasts. The move toward more remote, hostile locations is driving the increased need for satellite communications in the market generally, increasing the total retail revenues to over $1.1bn p.a.

Bandwidth demands are also increasing, requiring over 97 TPEs of C/Ku-band and 9.6 Gbps of HTS capacity in 2021. This represents a real opportunity for everyone involved in the commercial satcom market to grow and develop their value added services. We’ve been active in the oil and gas sector for some years now and look forward to working closely with our partners to help increase our presence there.

According to the report, the M2M market will reach the grand sum of $38bn in revenues in 2012 alone. That’s a significant upgrade on most of the recent estimates we’ve seen. According to Visiongain operators are eagerly turning toward the M2M market as an opportunity to grow their stagnating revenue streams.

Visiongain believes that M2M is poised for massive growth in 2012 through to 2017 as operators seek to develop more sophisticated solutions ecosystems and take advantage of coming improvements in network technology and performance.

One of the telematics markets that’s hotly tipped for expansion over the next few years is vehicle ‘black-boxes’ for insurance purposes. As insurance premiums rise and the cost for insuring younger drivers climbs ever higher, insurance companies have got innovative and turned to the latest M2M technologies. Recent research that’s just been published by ABI research suggests that the insurance telematics market will grow by an astounding 90% between 2010 and 2017. That’s a rise from 1.85 million subscribers to just shy of 90 million.

These intelligent black boxes will allow insurers to monitor the actual use of the insured vehicle, keeping careful track of driver behaviour: acceleration, average speed, cornering, braking will all be monitored to keep drivers in line with the requirements of their insurance policies. Access to this level of detail is allowing insurers to develop driver specific insurance policies. If you’re in the 17-25 age bracket, this means that the black box will enable your insurer to keep you off the road between the hours of 11pm and 5am (when most young driver related accidents take place). It will also mean that if you contravene the terms of your policy you can expect an additional premium to be levied.

Yes it’s all a little bit ‘Big Brother’ but it’s an innovative attempt to adapt the latest M2M technology and address a real and pressing business need. For young people across the UK, finding competitive car insurance is growing increasingly difficult, having ‘Big Brother’ sitting in your passenger seat seems like a small price to pay.

S3 are long standing technical parters for Iridium, having played a key role in the development of the 9602 Short burst data product. Their new design win will see them develop an Iridium Radio Frequency (RF) customer Integrated Circuit to allow next generation Iridium communications devices to deliver the upgraded services enabled by the NEXT system.

Iridium NEXT will enable higher data speeds as well as powerful new services and devices when it launches in 2015. Like all Iridium partners we’re keeping a very close eye on NEXT developments and are pleased to hear that the design process is moving ahead and that everything is on schedule for 2015.

With full construction due to start later next year (2013), Iridium are now on track to begin assembling engineering model units to verify the design and performance of the system. This phase (Critical Design Review) is scheduled to be complete in the spring of 2013, after which full construction can begin.

With preliminary design agreed and signed off, there are a number of critical milestones still to meet before the NEXT constellation starts launching in 2015.

– 2012: Detailed hardware and software design culminating in the Space Segment Critical Design Review (CDR) in early 2013

– 2013: Initial space and launch vehicle hardware production and extensive performance testing to ensure it meets its requirements

– 2014: Satellite and launcher/dispenser level qualification testing and the initiation of satellite low-rate production in preparation for the first launch

– 2015: First year of launching and integrating Iridium NEXT satellite vehicles into the Iridium(R) constellation; transition to full-rate production

– 2016: Second year of launching and integrating the Iridium NEXT satellite vehicles

– 2017: Planned complete constellation replacement with Iridium NEXT fully operational

Like all Iridium partners, we’re looking forward to seeing what NEXT can do and making full use of its ground-breaking functionality. We’ll keep our readers updates on NEXT developments as the project progresses.

'Health and Safety Gone Mad' receive their Iridium 9555 satellite phone from Simon Tremlett and Phil Rouse of Wireless Innovation

The first ever ‘Siberian Black Ice Race’ is every bit as nasty as it sounds and has been described as ‘longer than England, colder than Vodka and harder than Granite’. There’s no doubt that competitors face a truly gruelling challenge traversing the frozen wilderness of Siberia’s notorious Lake Baikal. It’s a 14-day marathon of 379 miles that will expose them to extremes of weather with temperatures of -40 degrees Celsius and winds of 100 km/h.

Our boys are a team of  local Health and Safety officers from Gloucestershire; Keith Leslie, Rhys Thomas and Haydn Brookes who are operating under the team name ‘Health and Safety Gone Mad’. They’ve decided to prove to the world that Health and Safety Officers can take on risk and adventure.

In their own words…” in recent years Health and Safety has become shorthand for unnecessary bureaucracy. Our aim is to re-ignite the British spirit for adventure and fun and encourage sensible risk-taking. Ordinary people can do extraordinary things. Lake Baikal will be the most extreme example of sensible risk management we’ve attempted to date.”

Wireless Innovation will be providing the guys with an Iridium 9555 satellite phone to keep them in contact with their friends, family and support team as they trek across the ice. We’re looking forward to hearing tales of derring-do when they return in April and wish them all the best for the challenge ahead.

It’s all in aid of good causes and further information can be provided by the team themselves so why not visit their website at www.healthandsafetygonemad.co.uk where you can make a donation.

The storm will be the largest we have seen in five years and threatens to disrupt power distribution as well as communications systems and satellites.

The storm is due to hit this morning and last through until Friday.

We’d like to assure our satellite customers that we will be closely monitoring their systems over the coming few days to ensure that they are not affected.

The budget package that was unveiled on Monday seems to reverse this long-established strategy in two key areas, the use of commercial imagery to supplement spy satellites and capacity leasing to provide additional communications bandwidth.

The moves take place despite continued shortcoming in the DoD’s own satellite delivery supply chain. The Navy’s newest communications satellite MUOS is currently 3 years late and around $6 billion over budget. When it finally comes on line it will only operate at 3% of its planned capacity for at least 12 months and yet defence chiefs have refused to augment this with temporary commercial solutions.

While the official explanation for the move is budget cutting, many industry insiders suspect that the DoD’s real motive is to protect their own research and development capabilities from the growing encroachment of commercial alternatives.

It remains to be seen what impact these moves will have on the commercial satellite ecosystem but if (as some predict) the budget cuts reach as high as 40% or $300 million there are bound to be some casualties.