VIDEO: Inmarsat launches ELERA

Inmarsat CEO Rajeev Suri: “ELERA is the exciting vision of how Inmarsat is planning to transform the capabilities offered to IoT and mobility customers for years to come and confirms our long-term commitment to L-band services.”

In its second major announcement in two weeks, Inmarsat today unveiled Inmarsat ELERA, a global narrowband network aimed at serving the rapidly evolving world of the Internet of Things (IoT) and global mobility customers, including maritime, aviation, governments and key enterprises.

“ELERA is perfectly suited to the needs of the connected IoT world,” said Rajeev Suri, CEO, Inmarsat. “Global reach, extraordinary resilience, faster speeds, smaller and lower cost terminals are all part of ensuring that we remain ahead of others in meeting the needs of our customers.”

ELERA builds on Inmarsat’s leading position in mobile satellite services (MSS) and aims to be a springboard for innovation, unlocking, accelerating and scaling a range of pioneering uses. Its foundation is Inmarsat’s L-band network and it incorporates new innovations ranging from higher speeds to smaller, low cost terminals and the new Inmarsat-6 satellites, the first of which (I-6 F1) is scheduled to launch before the end of the year.

Launched just 14 days after Inmarsat announced ORCHESTRA, the world’s first network to combine GEO, LEO and 5G into one global communications solution, ELERA underlines Inmarsat’s strategic focus on the global mobility segment of satellite communications.

nmarsat says that ELERA incorporates new spectrum management capabilities that will deliver the fastest speeds globally available to L-band customers, far outstripping the capabilities of any other worldwide L-band network.

Live customer trials in commercial aviation are scheduled to start during the course of 2022 and this technology will be rolled out across a range of sector specific applications for Inmarsat’s mobility, government and IoT customers over the coming few years.

ELERA will also see the creation of the smallest footprint, low cost terminal for L-band users, delivering the ideal framework for satcom IoT at scale, with supporting cloud-based management, for vertical sectors such as maritime and aviation, infrastructure, rail, logistics, mining, agriculture amd government, .

Inmarsat is launching two new satellites to enhance the ELERA network. The I-6 satellites, the first of which is scheduled to launch at the end of 2021, are the largest and most sophisticated commercial communications satellites ever built.

The L-band capacity on each I-6 satellite will be substantially greater than Inmarsat’s fourth generation spacecraft, delivering 50% more capacity per beam; meaning that much more data can be carried over the same geographical area, in addition to unlimited beam routing flexibility.

ELERA will also deliver a major extension to Inmarsat’s portfolio of voice-enabled devices, bringing new capabilities and innovations to hundreds of thousands of customers.