[Satellite TODAY Insider 12-01-10] Inmarsat has launched its handheld service, as well as the 176kbps streaming-rate BGAN service in Vietnam, the company announced Nov. 30.

     Inmarsat Director of Land Business told Satellite TODAY Insider that Vietnam’s rapidly growing economy, combined with the communication challenges faced by its terrestrial networks and the region’s limited coverage of GSM, have created a broader opportunity for the company to capture the market than when it ran a similar event for Vietnamese BGAN in 2008. “We felt it was a good time to present our story here again. So, this was also an opportunity to present an update on BGAN and the new streaming capability of the BGAN X-Stream and the 176kbps streaming service targeted particularly at broadcasters,” he said.

    While Brandy said Inmarsat has no new deals on the horizon to launch these services in other markets in Asia, the company is entertaining discussions with potential organizations with adequate demand and distribution ability. “So much of Asia Pacific is, for one reason or another, a target market for our services. We’d like to build on the success of the 5,500 BGANs deployed in the Phillipines‘ elections in May this year. China is a major market, of course, as is Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Australia. There are less obvious opportunities too. For example, the National Fisheries Authority of Papua New Guinea recently selected Inmarsat for vessel-monitoring, beginning with 500 ships. There is no shortage of opportunities to be seized in the region.”

    Since the launch of its third Inmarsat-4 satellite over the Asia Pacific region and the repositioning of the I-4 constellation in February 2009, Brandy said that Inmarsat has seen accelerated growth of its BGAN portfolio services region. 

    “This is not surprising if you look at the region’s love of mobile communications and technology: it is a region that loves gadgets, loves communicating. The press conference in Vietnam this morning was bristling with iPads and smart phones; journalists were filing their stories during the event. It is a cultural characteristic that has led to the expectation that mobile communications should be accessible everywhere. It has created a strong opportunity for BGAN, and we believe for IsatPhone Pro too,” said Brandy. “It is important for us to recognize, and for our end users, that satellite phones are targeted at a very different market than GSM mobile phones. Although it is a mature market, there still seems to be some confusion out there. As such, we have needed to undertake additional work to educate the market as to how to use our services and get the best result from the product. These are things that no company should take for granted.”
 

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