A quarter is shown for scale next to the Iridium 9604 three-in-one IoT module. Photo: Iridium

Iridium has made a further move in the IoT market, launching a new IoT module that integrates Iridium Short Burst Data (SBD) satellite service, LTE-M cellular connectivity, and GNSS positioning into a single platform. This new solution, Iridium 9604, aims to reduce solution complexity, lower costs, and accelerate time to market. The aim is to make dual-mode IoT connectivity viable for price-sensitive, high-volume deployments. Iridium announced the IoT launch, Feb. 24.

The Iridium 9604 beta program, which launched earlier this year and was oversubscribed by a select group of companies. Commercial availability begins in June, and the Iridium 9604 development kit is available for testing satellite and cellular services.

The Iridium 9604, built on the u-blox SARA-R5 platform, is a compact form factor, shown above. Iridium said it is ideal for dual-mode IoT deployments previously cost-prohibitive across industrial, infrastructure, and mobility applications.

“As an early Iridium 9604 developer, utilizing the three-in-one module has already fundamentally changed our product economics. We eliminated two components from our bill of materials, reduced our board size, and simplified our power architecture. This is a major breakthrough for our IoT solutions. Additionally, having dual mode connectivity options enables a smarter, location-aware network selection in our application. The Iridium 9604 turned what would have been a complex multi-component design into a single-module solution,” Alastair MacLeod, CEO of Ground Control, said in a statement.