Newpoint Announces Iridium Modem Support for Mercury Products
SALEM, NH, March 22, 2007 - Satnews Daily - Newpoint Technologies,
Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of network management company Integral Systems, Inc., now supports the Iridium satellite modem in its Mercury EM products.
Mercury EM is an element manager used to interface with equipment located at remote sites around the globe and send the data to a network management system (such as the Newpoint Compass NMS) at a network operations center (NOC). These sites include fixed, transportable and mobile satellite terminals, as well as AM/FM/TV transmitter, cellular and microwave radio sites. Network operators can then remotely troubleshoot and recover services without physically traveling to the site.
"In the past, failure at remote unmanned sites, which brought down primary communications, had no other way to restore the site without dispatching a technician," stated Wally Martland, general manager of Newpoint. “Today, because Mercury contains an Iridium satellite modem, they can initiate a connection to any place in the world over the Iridium satellite network, and restore those services remotely, or in the worst case, identify the cause of failure and dispatch the technician with the proper equipment so they can resolve the problem quickly, efficiently and in only a single trip. We are seeing a large demand for this capability in remote sites in places like Africa, Alaska and Iraq, where the sites are often difficult to get to and can also be dangerous for travel."
The first batch of Mercury units using the Iridium modems have already been shipped and will be installed in transportable terminals going into Iraq for use by an undisclosed US government agency. This will allow them to remotely set up the transportable from the US using the Iridium network, and then once the site is on-line, the Mercury will use the engineering service Channel (ESC) for its primary communications back to the NOC. If for some reason the site goes down, operators can initiate another Iridium connection to determine the cause of failure and restore services.
Newpoint provides satellite and terrestrial network management systems for control of data, Internet, broadcast, telecom and hybrid networks. Newpoint has also been an important supplier of software and hardware for remote site management products. Newpoint's principal customers are commercial satellite operators, telecommunications companies, broadcasters and broadband service providers.
Newpoint is a subsidiary of Integral Systems, Inc (Nasdaq: ISYS). Founded in 1982, Integral and its subsidiaries offer solutions that include satellite command and control, Quality of Service monitoring for satellite operators and users, and satellite network management systems (M&C). Integral Systems claims to have built more ground systems for a greater variety of satellites than any other company.
