Iridium Communications is the only mobile satellite service (MSS) company offering pole-to-pole coverage over the entire globe. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Iridium’s Executive Vice President of the PNT Division Michael O’Connor to learn more about the company.
Michael O’Connor’s Background
What is Michael O’Connor’s background? O’Connor said:
“I am the head of Iridium’s Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Division and the former CEO of Satelles. Before building Satelles, I was at the forefront of the booming field of precision agriculture. While a graduate student at Stanford University in 1994, I led the team that invented the world’s first farm tractor steering control system using GPS.”
“Upon graduating in 1997, I co-founded IntegriNautics (later renamed Novariant and subsequently acquired by AgJunction), where Dr. Gregory Gutt and I established the AutoFarm business and brought to market the first products based on this technology. This work formed the basis for what is now a $1B+ global market.”
“I am proud to have been honored by MIT Technology Review as one of the world’s top young innovators and by GPS World in its first-ever list of leaders to watch in the PNT market. It was also a distinct honor to be inducted into the Space Technology Hall of Fame.”
“I have a B.S. in Avionics from M.I.T. and my M.S. and Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University.”
Satelles Acquisition
Back in March, Iridium acquired the secured satellite-based time and location services company Satelles. How did the idea for the Iridium acquisition of Satelles come about? O’Connor shared:
“The deal was inspired by Iridium’s philosophy of investing in differentiating technologies uniquely suited to its network that can significantly outperform competing solutions. Iridium was a founding partner and long-standing investor in Satelles and maintained an ownership stake of around 20% from three previous investments in the company… For the remaining approximately 80 percent, Iridium paid about $115 million, net of cash remaining in the company, which was financed through a tack-on to its term loan.”
“Satelles and Iridium were both aware that the emerging market for assured positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services is poised for explosive growth, as PNT users are becoming painfully aware of the real world impacts of jamming and spoofing of GPS. The unique and proven solutions offered by Satelles, combined with Iridium’s global reach and ability to scale quickly, meant that bringing the two companies together made a tremendous amount of sense.”
Core Products
What are the Iridium core products and features that will be developed as an outcome of this deal? O’Connor explained:
“Upon the close of the acquisition in early April, Iridium announced that the Satellite Time and Location (STL) service — now renamed Iridium® STL — had joined the Iridium portfolio of solutions. In addition to being available to our current customers and industry partners in the timing solutions market, Iridium STL is now potentially available for direct integration by Iridium’s ecosystem of approximately 500 partners around the world. These are partners that for many years have manufactured, developed, marketed, and supported innovative applications for Iridium products and services in a variety of different markets and industries, and we can’t wait to see what they dream up for Iridium STL.”
“Iridium STL makes it easier to secure GPS and other GNSS-reliant systems’ time-synchronized applications from vulnerabilities like spoofing and jamming, by using small, low-cost hardware that doesn’t require outdoor antennas. Today, our solutions primarily help secure critical infrastructure, data centers, and 5G base stations. Going forward, we see tremendous opportunity to expand our product offerings to bring resilient time and location to the maritime, land mobile, IoT and aviation sectors.”
Sector Focus
Are there particular sectors that hold the most appeal for Iridium STL? O’Connor replied:
“Time synchronization is an essential capability that plays an important role in the global economy, particularly in the commercial sector for major industries supported by critical infrastructure, such as financial services, telecommunications, cybersecurity, and transportation. For example, these industries and others rely on an estimated 10,000 data centers globally and their hundreds of millions of data processing and storage servers. Each of these servers requires time synchronization and can benefit from the in-server room efficiency and resilience delivered by Iridium STL.”
“As we look to the future, it is clear that resilient positioning is another essential capability that we will be focusing on. Users in the vicinity of geopolitical conflict regions are starting to see real impacts from GPS jamming and spoofing. For example, in late April Finnair announced that it was canceling flights into Estonia due to rampant GPS jamming. We are also routinely hearing reports of cargo ships experiencing GPS interference significant enough to not only disrupt commercial operations but also place their crew in harm’s way. The Iridium STL technologies that deliver secure timing can also provide positioning solutions to these other industries. We expect to be working with our partners to deliver solutions to these critical needs.”
Challenges Faced
What are some of the challenges associated with satellite time and location services, and how is the new combined Iridium STL team working to overcome the existing market gaps. O’Connor acknowledged:
“Historically, the STL service has only been offered in the continental U.S. and a handful of other regional locations. One key advantage of bringing the product and technologies into Iridium is that we can now dramatically expand the coverage area for this exciting service – at exactly the time that the world is becoming aware of the need.”
Customer Success Stories
Can you share any specific current customer use cases, or even success stories? O’Connor highlighted:
“Iridium STL is providing a new opportunity for Iridium’s existing partner ecosystem to add to their portfolio of solutions and harden their GNSS-reliant products and infrastructure.”
“We recently announced a new five-year commercial contract with L3Harris Technologies for the Iridium STL service. Under the terms of the five-year agreement, Iridium will provide the STL service to more than three dozen L3Harris-operated communications network backbone nodes and a similar number of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) facilities throughout the United States. The nodes are critical for protecting our nation’s aviation safety, and we are delighted that the FAA and L3Harris have chosen to partner with Iridium to help meet this critical need.”
“L3Harris owns and operates a private nationwide network for the FAA, providing voice, data, and video communications for the National Airspace System operations and mission support functions. Timing synchronization is essential within the L3Harris communications network, especially since it supports several critical infrastructure applications. The Iridium STL service is a vital component of the overall network timing architecture that removes dependencies on GPS as a primary timing source.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates your company from its competition? O’Connor concluded:
“There are countless users of PNT services, with some estimates stating that there are over 6 billion GPS receivers in use today with more than 10 billion expected by 2031. There are a few different technologies that can complement and deliver resilience to PNT users, and different applications will have different needs. Iridium is focused on markets where our network can deliver unique and differentiated value to our partners and customers.”
“Unlike solutions based on the buildout of local infrastructure such as terrestrial transmitters or physical networks, Iridium STL can be delivered anywhere in the world – today – without the need to deploy local infrastructure. This makes it ideal for the timing and positioning markets we’ve discussed above: secure timing for telecommunications networks, data centers, power grids, and financial services, and secure positioning for maritime, land mobile, IoT and aviation.”
“Another unique advantage of Iridium STL is that the service is delivered from low Earth orbit (LEO), over a high-power L-band paging channel. The proximity to Earth and high power channel means that the Iridium STL signal is extremely powerful, and therefore substantially more resilient to interference and jamming than satellites in higher orbits, such as GPS. It also turns out that L-band is an ideal frequency range for PNT in that L-band signals penetrate the atmosphere more efficiently and are not substantially degraded by rain or other atmospheric effects, so the signals can be tracked with very small antennas and low-cost user equipment.”
“Government authorities in the U.S. (including the National Institute of Standards & Technology, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Transportation) and Europe have subjected Iridium STL to rigorous testing and determined that our LEO PNT service has the level of performance necessary to support timing synchronization in multiple critical infrastructure sectors. The subscription-based STL service works indoors and can be received on small form factor, easy-to-install user equipment from our expanding lineup of leading manufacturing partners. While other companies only offer service in limited geographic areas or are planning to deploy service years from now, Iridium STL is available today.”
