[Satellite TODAY 09-21-09] Iridium Satellite has partnered with mobile satellite industry companies and the emergency response community to form the Promotion of Two-way Emergency Communication and Tracking Systems (ProTECTS) alliance, Iridium announced Sept. 17.
    The alliance aims to foster the adoption of portable, two-way satellite-based location, tracking and messaging technologies and address issues affecting suppliers and users of these vital safety devices.
    “While one-way emergency beacons can provide a valuable aid to life-saving services, experience has shown that they can have a high incidence of false alerts triggered by accidental activation. This places a heavy burden on first responders who must try to verify, by independent means, the validity of the distress signal before deploying rescue resources. The large number of distress alert messages makes it impractical – and prohibitively expensive – for authorities to launch search-and-rescue (SAR) operations without determining whether it is a real emergency or an inadvertent activation,” said U.S. Coast Guard Admr. James Loy (ret.), in a statement.
    Iridium also is launching an initiative to focus its internal engineering, research and development, product certification, activations, marketing and channel sales support resources to assist service partners in bringing personal safety products and services to market.
    The ProTECTS alliance membership includes Active Web Solutions, Blue Sky Network, DMC Worldwide, EMS Global Tracking, L-3 Communications, Paradigm Secure Communications and others.

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