Regional Bgan News

In a mutually beneficial strategic alliance, satcom provider Xantic has announced the signing of an agreement with GMPCS Communications Inc. for the delivery of various enhanced services in the United States and beyond. Under the terms of the new agreement, GMPCS will play a leading role in hosting Xantic’s Regional BGAN service in North America. GMPCS will deliver this service to companies and organisations with an international network, especially those working in the Middle East and North Africa. This move also represents a strategic step towards the future, when the BGAN service will become available. In a further development, this month will see GMPCS start delivery of its own messaging service called GMPCS Speed Mail.

Marlink today announced that it now offers a full range of Inmarsat services for customers requiring flexible and efficient land mobile communications over satellite. Marlink's new Regional Broadband Global Area Network (Regional BGAN) offers reliable, 24-hour a day Internet Protocol (IP) connectivity at data speeds of up to 144kbps via a secure channel. The service is available in Europe, Asia, and northern and central Africa. The service affords enterprise customers, governments, global and regional businesses, as well as educational facilities the ability to securely extend their corporate networks and access the Internet, via satellite, regardless of the local communications infrastructure.

Maritime communications is an estimated $1 billion industry, encompassing ship operators, merchant fleets, governments and private yacht owners. There is arguably no more quickly evolving technical sector in the maritime market than the satellite communications niche. Safety, operational efficiency and quality of life onboard vessels of all type and size today more than ever depends on clear, reliable and cost effective satellite communication services and products. The following reports on recent advances from major service, product and system suppliers. The year started with news that Connexion by Boeing, a business unit of The Boeing Company, would roll-out its high speed satellite broadband capability for the maritime industry.

Xantic announced the launch of Easy Accelerator, an application designed to make browsing the internet via satellite faster and cheaper than ever before. Available free of charge from Xantic’s website, Easy Accelerator optimizes internet and intranet usage by reducing the size of the selected web page content. A proxy computer located at a Land Earth Station ‘downsizes’ pictures, for example, by up to 80 percent, depending on the settings chosen. Audio files and text can also be reduced. As a result, browsing is much faster and the user’s satellite costs can be decreased by as much as 90 percent. Inmarsat has co-financed the development of this new service.