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Globe Wireless and Iridium


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Globe Wireless is now a "tier 1" reseller of Iridum and will be combining Iridium, digital HF radio and Inmarsat communications to its 4,000 customers under a single billing system.

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In October this year Globe Wireless announced that it was appointed a "Tier 1" reseller of Iridium into the maritime markets. 

This means that it will be able to combine its existing HF digital radio and Inmarsat ship shore communications service with Iridium satellite for data and voice.

As a "tier one" supplier of Iridium, Globe will be much more than a sales agent; it can splice Iridium's service into its own, and activate shipboard terminals. It will also train its engineers in how to fix and maintain Iridium equipment. 

Globe will be providing the same quality of support for Iridium as it does with its other existing services, including free e-mail to the support department and service engineers in all the world's major ports.

Globe is not the only "tier one" Iridium provider, (Statos is also one) but the only one with its own communications network; Globe Wireless owns a global digital HF radio network.

There are to date only 4 global maritime communications systems; Inmarsat, Iridium and Broadband Maritime (satellite) and Globe's digital HF radio network. There are other single satellite systems, such as CLS Argos. 

This means that Globe will be offering voice communications for the first time; until now the service has only been geared around data. 

All of this can be offered with the shipping company, or maybe individual seafarers onboard the ship, only having a single bill for everything.

Globe still anticipates that its digital HF radio network will be cheaper than Iridium for sending small, urgent chunks of data; for larger files or less urgent messages batched together, Inmarsat would be the choice.

But having different communications options available effectively builds in redundancy into the system - if one communications network goes down, due to a problem on land, in the sky or on the ship, there is another one available. 

The possibilities for using Iridium as part of a crew calling system have not yet really been explored; Globe Wireless already has a crew card system for e-mails, which could be extended to include Iridium phone calls made by seafarers. 

Iridium has a compelling value proposition for the maritime industry.

"People will pay for it because its cheap," comments Globe Wireless Europe general manager Alan Leach.

"For some people Iridium is very important," he says. "Its opening a gap which is traditionally an Inmarsat area."