MSUA announces five companies they have awarded as the top innovators, companies to watch and there's a new Chairman's award for outstanding user community development.
The Mobile Satellite Users Association (MSUA), today celebrated this year’s Mobility Satellite Innovation Award winners at its annual luncheon held in conjunction with the SATELLITE 2020 conference. Open to all MSUA members, the awards celebrate technical and service delivery innovations that are advancing today’s mobility market.
“The innovations within our industry create enormous value to user communities extending to every geography, market and discipline. MSUA promotes these solutions to enhance mobile connectivity worldwide”, said Frank August, Secretary of MSUA and Emcee of this year’s award ceremony. And, in a keynote address delivered by Mark Matossian, Chief Executive Officer, ICEYE US and formerly of Special Projects at Google, a Silicon Valley insider’s perspective was shared on the digital transformation era and lessons learned for the satellite mobility industry."
The luncheon was attended by MSUA members and others involved with or following the satellite mobility community. MSUA has an internationally distributed membership comprised of a variety of satellite companies delivering mobility solutions to the market. This year, MSUA celebrated the innovations of – Inmarsat, Speedcast, ZOLEO, Isotropic Networks, Inmarsat, ST Engineering and Solstar Space:
Inmarsat – “Top Government Mobility Innovation” for the LACE II solution which stands for L-band Advanced Communications Element. LACE II is a high-gain, two-way terminal that delivers record-breaking data rates up to 8Mbps across Inmarsat’s global L-band space and ground network. The terminal uses the award-winning Wideband Streaming L-band (WiSL) innovative lease capability and can establish connectivity in less than two minutes. With its efficient terminal size, weight and power (SWaP), LACE II is an ideal choice for military and civilian government users that require mission-critical, high-rate data feeds to and from remote locations, worldwide.
Speedcast – “Top Connected Mobile Platform Innovation” for SIGMA, a single, integrated, platform that’s scalable, modular and seamlessly manages Speedcast’s global VSAT, Fleet Xpress, 4G/LTE, Wi-Fi, and MSS services. It also includes built-in cybersecurity services for protection from a broad array of threats enabling a high availability, secure, and integrated environment for maritime businesses and their crew. Sigma significantly reduces IT costs while enabling Virtual Machine (VM) applications and remote network management and monitoring.
ZOLEO – “Top Mobility User Experience Innovation” for Zoleo, a seamless global messaging and personal safety solution for smartphone users who venture beyond cellular coverage. Zoleo (See the article in Satnews) is the product of a joint venture between Roadpost Inc., and Beam Communications Pty Ltd. and is the first consumer-focused messaging solution of its kind based on Iridium® Short Burst Data® (SBD®), cellular and Wi-Fi® standards.
Isotropic Networks – “Top 5G Hybrid Connectivity Innovation” for DataDragon™, a bandwidth management and service platform that enables never-before-possible levels of application-level transparency, optimization, and personalization across any single or hybrid network. DataDragon gives mobility users the ability to visualize data across the network, prioritizing time critical applications, such as VoIP, for public safety, emergency response, business continuity and more.
Inmarsat – “Best Mobility Marketing Campaign” for its multi-channel marketing campaign demonstrates how Inmarsat’s SATCOM as a Service is the next-generation model for providing government customers an end-to-end, fully integrated capability that delivers mobile, high-throughput connectivity the way users seek it: easily, affordably and operationally available no matter where they operate. Inmarsat showcases how SATCOM as a Service is a readily available alternative to address government users’ most essential communications challenges; allowing for rapid delivery of proven technology and on-going innovation that covers satellites, ground infrastructure and type-approved terminals to provide a fast, cost-effective solution.
ST Engineering — “Company to Watch”. The coming together of Newtec and iDirect was the first seismic change to occur in the ground segment market. ST Engineering iDirect’s leading mobility position and future vision to redefine the capabilities of ground infrastructure will certainly enable Satellite 3.0 to become reality. It’s ST Engineering iDirect's goal to ensure full interoperability across multi-orbits and future 5G networks to drive broader adoption of satellite connectivity at massive scale and enable its customers to offer unified, value-added services whenever they are needed.
Solstar Space – “Chairman’s Award: Outstanding Innovation for User Community Development”.
New this year, the Chairman’s Award celebrates the founding principle of MSUA, which was to engage new and expanding user communities to aid in the adoption of and use cases for satellite connectivity.
This year, MSUA is recognizing Solstar Space for their patent-pending technology and process to provide data communications services connecting people on earth to people, things, and machines in space, using existing (and emerging) MSS constellations and ground infrastructure. This means satellite connectivity can now enable Wi-Fi access to astronauts and future travelers in space.
In other news, MSUA welcomed three new companies into its membership this year: XipLink, Pivotel America and Omnispace.