Inmarsat focuses on data opportunities

Pre-empting other mobile satellite providers, Inmarsat announced last week that it will begin offering 64 kb/s data services by mid-year. Users will connect a laptop-sized device to a computer to access services such as e-mail, videoconferencing and remote LAN connection.

The demand for such capabilities is large now and will continue to grow in the coming years, said Andrew Ivey, marketing manager at Inmarsat. At the turn of the century, 55 million workers in the western world will be mobile, he said. Judging from the reliance on data connections today, those workers likely will continue to demand data links. "Today, data represents 40% of Inmarsat's traffic," he said. By 2003, Inmarsat expects that figure to grow to 70%.

Inmarsat believes the data offering will expand its user base, which has traditionally included government, oil and gas, construction, media and humanitarian aid workers. Data should draw users from industries such as finance, pharmaceutical, chemical, service consultancies and food and beverage producers, according to Inmarsat. "It's these enterprises that are expanding rapidly," Ivey said.

Until another satellite operator makes good on promises to deliver data capabilities in the future, Inmarsat will be one of the few operators offering mobile data. "They're getting a jump on people who have announced that they will come out with it," said Larry Swasey, senior wireless analyst for Allied Business Intelligence.

Inmarsat can offer the higher data rates using existing satellites with upgraded terrestrial gateways but plans to deploy new satellites in the future to offer rates up to 384 kb/s. Partners also had to develop new user terminals for the 64 kb/s service. "With these units, there was very clever engineering with respect to the antenna," said Ivey. Antenna size is an issue on terminals that connect to satellites as far away as Inmarsat's.

Inmarsat demonstrated applications already developed for the new data capability at the CeBIT show last week in Hannover, Germany, and plans to support continued application development. "We're offering technical and systems support to existing data application developers but also to up and coming developers," Ivey said.