Long awaited news came in over the Christmas period confirming that Globalstar had successfully launched six of its new second generation satellites from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The new satellites were launched using the Soyuz-Fregat version of the Soyuz launch vehicle on Wednesday 28th December. Each of the six new vehicles was successfully injected into a low earth orbit of around 920km and the company has confirmed that in-orbit testing is underway and that all of the new satellites are operating as they should be.

It’s very welcome news for Globalstar as their planned upgrades have been beset by financial and technical troubles and unscheduled delays. The launch is the third of a planned series of four that will enable Globalstar to roll out the world’s finest quality mobile satellite and voice services. The new satellites have been designed with a 15 year life expectancy, twice as long as the spacecraft they replace.

“It is with great pleasure that we announce the successful third launch and continued deployment of our second-generation constellation,” said Tony Navarra, President of Global Operations for Globalstar, Inc. “We are now only one launch away from completing our four second-generation satellite launches and we look forward to the future services our new constellation will support. With these six new satellites now safely in orbit, we once again congratulate and applaud all of our Globalstar employees world-wide and thank launch provider Arianespace as well as our satellite contractor Thales Alenia Space for this launch success.”

The team at Wireless Innovation would like to offer our congratulations to Globalstar. They are a valued partner and we look forward to continued success.

There was some great news from one of our valued satellite partners last week when Iridium reported strong financial results for the third quarter of 2011. The headline figure was a record third quarter revenue of $102.1 million, growth of 8 percent over the same period in 2010.

The revenue split between service revenue and equipment sales and support illustrates the strength of Iridium’s growing subscriber base. Service revenue represents recurring revenue from this installed user base and had grown by an impressive 11 percent over the third quarter of 2011. Service revenue now accounts for 68 percent of Iridium’s total revenue.

It’s not hard to see where this growth is coming from as Iridium continues to attract subscribers at a very healthy pace. At the end of the third quarter 2011, the company reported 508,000 billable subscribers. That’s an increase of almost 100,000 subscribers over the same period in 2010 and an additional 30,000 since the end of the second quarter of 2011.

These impressive results demonstrate the strength of the satellite communications industry and highlight the incredible success that Iridium are having with a diverse and flexible product portfolio. They’re understandably bullish about 2012 so let’s hope the success continues.

We’ve come across some great advice from our partners at iDirect on how to improve the efficiency of your network operations centre. It’s a very useful guide explaining how to keep up with the demands of an increasingly large network, you can read the full details here but here’s our shorthand version…

1. Integrate as much as possible. Take an inventory of all your systems and their respective functions. Where possible, where there is redeundancy or repetition – integrate.
2. Monitor as much as possible. Effective tracking and reporting enables you to identify issuse before they become problems. Historic and real-time data should be packaged and presented in a digestible, actionable format.
3. Automate as much as possible. Handing off routine tasks brings efficiency and cost savings. It also helps to automate diagnostic and support functions, it reduces support times and increases network efficiency.
4. Simplify as much as possible. Customers respond better when their expectations are managed and information is presented to them in a clear and concise way. Supporting SLAs in a clear, transparent manner breeds trust.
5. Communicate as much as possible. Allowing customers access to key data in real-time gives them meaningful control and allows them to manage their own traffic.

More news from our partners at Globalstar as they announce that the satellite based Simplex data network has processed an average of more than 6.5 million messages per week over the a 4-week period in September.

This represents a massive 50% increase over similar data from January 2010, suggesting that the market for Simplex data traffic is rising rapidly.  Globalstar uses satellite based Simplex data M2M to offer a variety of solutions such as asset tracking and data monitoring.

“Customers who simply want to track or monitor the condition of mobile assets virtually anywhere are surprised to learn of the affordability of our low cost but highly reliable solution that operates from some of the most remote regions around the globe,” said Steve Smits, VP of International Sales and Marketing for Globalstar, Inc. “The low cost of acquisition combined with our affordable data rates make Globalstar an attractive solution for customers looking to effectively track everything from heavy equipment, vehicles and cargo containers to livestock and remote workers. Even as we launch our new constellation of satellites and restore our voice and duplex data services, we want to re-emphasize our commitment to providing innovative and affordable Simplex data M2M and SPOT retail solutions to this important and fast growing segment of the mobile satellite services marketplace.”

Iridium Communications announced last month that it had reached a significant milestone. As of September 12th, Iridium  clocked up its 500,000th billable subscriber for its satellite voice and data services. The profiel of these customers is 90% commercial against 10% government.

One of the main reasons Irdium has cited for this growth is the rapidly expanding M2M data market. Q2 2011 results showed that M2M subscribers now account for 32% of billable commercial subscribers.

“Our consistent double-digit growth in subscribers — more than 25 percent growth every year for the last five years — is a reflection of our global network reach, our service offerings enabling important connections, and our expanding partner ecosystem,” said Matt Desch, CEO, Iridium. “This milestone demonstrates how far we’ve evolved over the last 10 years from a supplier of mobile satellite phones for niche markets into a global communications company connecting anyone and anything, all over the world, in ways and places in which they expect to be connected.”

We’re looking forward to more positive news from all our satellite patners and to seeing how Iridium NEXT (the company’s next-gen network) adds additional value for partners and cusomers.

It’s been a mixed few weeks for Globalstar as the company strives to gets its second generation satellite network off the ground. We had encouraging news earlier in the month when it was revealed that the satellites had been registered with the UN and saw reports that the operator had switched on its ground stations in the US, Canada and Mexico. All of this seems to have been done in the nick of time as Globalstar raced to meet various loan related deadlines. A huge sigh of relief all round.

Unfortunately, we hear now that there’s been a setback. It seems that, following a launch failure on August 24th, Russian Space Agency, (Roscosmos) officials have decided that nothing gets off the ground until all Soyuz 2.1a launch vehicles have undergone detailed inspections. This seems likely to push back the scheduled mid-October launch date to December.

This is the third scheduled launch in Globalstar’s $1bn network upgrade and is a significant part of the company’s future growth plans. As a long standing Globalstar partner we’re keen to see the new constellation up and running along with the promise of new and exciting services yet to be announced  will be watching closely as the next scheduled launch date approaches

Wireless Innovation have been appointed by NI Water to provide cost effective satellite telemetry links to a number of new Wastewater Pumping Stations that were unable to be covered by the existing scanning radio network.

Wireless Innovation Ltd a leading supplier of remote data communication solutions to the water industry proposed their industry proven MiChrosat 2400 dial up satellite solution. The MiChrosat 2400 system uses the Iridium LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellite constellation which provides cost effective telemetry dial up anywhere in the world.

The installation was simple with the MiChrosat antenna (does not require any alignment) mounted on a similar column as used for the scanning radio network and the MiChrosat satellite modem mounted in the same street cabinet alongside the outstation.

The outstation a Serck PX 24 is connected to the MiChrosat 2400 unit via a single serial (RS232) cable. The Wastewater Pumping Station is polled on a 24 hour schedule via a centrally site installed MiChrosat 2400 which is connected to the Master Station System. The outstation utilises exception reporting so that should an alarm condition occur between schedule polls the outstation will automatically wake up the MiChrosat 2400 and initiate the transfer of the alarm state to the Master Station System.

The Michrosat 2400 connected to the Master Station System enables the calls to remain within the satellite network thereby minimising call costs as well as insulating the satellite network from any external fault conditions. Further MiChrosat 2400 Satellite Modems mounted at Wastewater Pumping Stations will utilise the same MiChrosat 2400 connected to the Master Station System.