Friday, April 18, 2008

Zodiac commits 125 ships to Iridium OpenPort

UK ship management company Zodiac Maritime Agencies has announced that it is equipping its fleet of 125 ships with the Iridium OpenPort optimised-bandwidth satellite terminals under a service agreement with AND Group, becoming the first shipping company to publicly commit to the service.
The new OpenPort service marks a major departure for Iridium from its established low-data rate products by offering bandwidth of up to 128 kbps on a global basis to the maritime industry. The system can also carry 3 simultaneous voice calls while the data service is in use.
“After evaluating its projected requirements for ship-to-shore voice and data, Zodiac has made the decision to upgrade to Iridium OpenPort across the fleet
“The higher-bandwidth satellite service, coupled with AND Group’s IPSignature software and Iridium’s flexible per-megabyte pricing, will provide a cost-effective fleetwide solution for ship’s business, crew calling and e-mail.”
Iridium is trying to position the product as a low-cost alternative to other mobile satellite systems.

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