Iridium Introduces Crew Calling

Iridium Satellite LLC announced the availability of crew calling services for the maritime industry. Iridium's crew calling solution simultaneously supports pre-paid calling for individual crew members and subscription services for a vessel's official communications. Iridium's new crew calling program allows vessel owners and operators to provide both official and personal communications from a single phone. Vessel operators can provide pre-paid scratch cards to individual crew members to allow for personal calling. For official business, the captain and crew can use the same phone for subscription-based calls. Beginning immediately, Iridium will offer the new crew calling services through its global network of service providers. The initial service providers include GloCall, Stratos, European Datacomm, Roadpost, Global Plus, Global Satellite, Infosat, Marconi, World Communications Center, GeoLink, Fibertel, Marlink and AST.