Iridium and Arion Announce Partnership to Offer Iridium(R) Satellite Products and Services in South Korea
Iridium Communications Inc. (Nasdaq:IRDM) and Arion Communication Co., Ltd., a specialist in maritime, aviation and land-mobile navigation and communications equipment, today announced a strategic partnership in which Arion will distribute Iridium mobile satellite communications services and products in South Korea. Arion will be offering its customers—including government/military, aviation, maritime and enterprise organizations—the benefits of the Iridium network, which delivers reliable voice and data communications, anywhere on the planet—even polar regions.
As part of the agreement, Arion will be reselling Iridium Pilot, powered by Iridium’s OpenPort® broadband service, which provides the industry’s only pole-to-pole mobile wireless coverage for ships at sea. It will also be selling Iridium GO!, the world’s first truly global smartphone access device; the rugged, weatherproof Iridium Extreme® handset; and the Iridium Short Burst Data (SBD) service. Through the Iridium partnership, Arion will be providing worldwide M2M communication coverage to global companies based in South Korea.
“We are especially excited about the opportunity to offer Iridium Pilot and Iridium SBD for reliable vessel monitoring systems to our customers,” said Tony Park, CEO, Arion Communication. “Safety is of vital concern to every organization we work with, so it is important that we offer the most reliable products and services for their critical communications. With Iridium, we can deliver this today. And we are looking forward to offering them the many benefits of the Iridium NEXT satellite constellation when it comes online in the future.”
Iridium NEXT, the company’s next-generation satellite constellation, is scheduled to begin launching in late 2015. It will enable the Iridium CertusSM broadband service, which will deliver versatile, enterprise-grade, reliable communications and support a portfolio of partner products with a broad range of data speeds eventually as high as 1.4 megabits per second for a single user terminal. The Iridium NEXT constellation deployment is scheduled for completion in late 2017.
“We are excited to welcome Arion as an Iridium partner as it is experiencing tremendous growth in markets that can benefit from our products and services,” said Bryan Hartin, executive vice president, sales and marketing, Iridium. “We look forward to working with Arion to enable the company’s continued expansion.”
For more information on Iridium, go to www.iridium.com.
About Iridium Communications Inc.
Iridium is the only mobile voice and data satellite communications network that spans the entire globe. Iridium enables connections between people, organizations and assets to and from anywhere, in real time. Together with its ecosystem of partner companies, Iridium delivers an innovative and rich portfolio of reliable solutions for markets that require truly global communications. The company has a major development program underway for its next-generation network — Iridium NEXT. Iridium Communications Inc. is headquartered in McLean, Va., U.S.A., and its common stock trades on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the ticker symbol IRDM. For more information about Iridium products, services and partner solutions, visit www.iridium.com.
About Arion
Established in 2004, Arion Communication is based in Seoul, Korea. Customers include Military, Government and Enterprises across various verticals, and consumers. Solutions include networking, system integration, managed network services, security transaction, Internet, broadband and interactive distance education based on satellite network. Arion also provides the hardware, network and applications that work together to deliver a cost-effective, integrated approach for tracking, monitoring, control, and management of vehicles, vessels and assets anywhere in the world. In a short span of time Arion Communication has become leading satellite service provider which has enhanced the digital connectivity and increased the information flow within Asia. For more information, please contact sales@arionit.com
