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| New Iridium ground station in Alaska Iridium Satellite has begun construction of a new Telemetry, Tracking and Command/Control (TTAC) site inFairbanks, Alaska. With this new facility, Iridium will be adding anotherlayer of flexibility and redundancy for its global mobile satellitecommunication network. Covering 12 acres, the company will initially equip the new Alaska groundstation with three Iridium earth terminals (ETs). Iridium will add twoadditional ETs later this year, with three more planned in 2007. Alaska-basedemployees will manage the site. "Alaska is the logical location for the ground station because of thephysical configuration of the Iridium network, " said Carmen Lloyd, CEO andChairman, Iridium Satellite. "In addition, the state offers a pool of humanand technological resources, many affiliated with local universities andbusinesses. Couple that with Alaska's modern infrastructure, and top-notchtelecommunications and energy resources. The state also has been ideal towork with from an economic and regulatory standpoint." The Fairbanks ground station will provide additional visibility and accessto Iridium's constellation of 66 low-earth orbiting, cross-linked and fullymeshed satellites. It will add to the company's command and controlcapabilities and functionality, particularly for government users. Thecompany also will use the ground station for remote access to Iridiumsatellites from the company's existing gateways. If space-to-ground communications is ever interrupted at an existingIridium site, the Alaska ground station will allow access to the constellationwithout interfering with normal traffic activity. This adds yet another layerof important reliability for the Iridium network and for customers. TheAlaska ground station will be Iridium's fourth TTAC site. Two are located inCanada and one is located in Iceland. "Iridium wants to welcome new employees joining the Alaska team thisyear, " Lloyd said. "Their work in this facility will not only help Iridiumadd network capabilities today. We're making a major investment inmaintaining the robustness and reliability of our network. And, we now havethe opportunity to further expand utilization of our network through this sitein the future." write your comments about the article :: © 2006 Networking News :: home page |