Mobile satellite communications company, Inmarsat, has announced that it will bring its aviation, maritime and enterprise connectivity solutions to customers based in Saudi Arabia through new partner agreements.
The company has also secured new spectrum licences to deliver both its narrow-band (L-band) and high-capacity broadband (Ka-band), Global Xpress (GX), services in Saudi Arabia, enabling Saudi-based businesses to deploy these services for the first time.
Fixed and mobile satellite telecommunications distributor Sada Al Ammah and Global Beam Telecom have been appointed as Inmarsat’s first distribution partners in Saudi Arabia and the region, and they will work closely with Inmarsat’s Maritime, Aviation and Enterprise businesses to roll-out services in the region.
Inmarsat’s Aviation business will work with Sada Al Ammah to deliver cockpit safety services and passenger cabin broadband wi-fi connectivity (GX Aviation for commercial airlines and Jet ConneX for business jets) to companies based in Saudi-Arabia.
Inmarsat’s L-band network provides connectivity services for users on land, at sea and in the air. The network enables a wide range of use cases such as fleet management, remote analytics, data transfer and other IoT/M2M applications in areas with non-existent or unreliable connectivity. Focus areas for these use cases will include oil and gas, transport and aid and non-governmental organisations.
”Saudi Arabia is a fast-growing and important market for aviation connectivity solutions,” said Philip Balaam, president of Inmarsat Aviation. “Inmarsat looks forward to working with commercial airlines in Saudi Arabia to enable them to upgrade to the world’s leading aviation connectivity solutions, covering high-speed inflight passenger broadband in the aircraft cabin and gold standard operations and safety in the cockpit.”
Further capacity is set to benefit customers in Saudi Arabia and beyond, as the recently-launched GX-5 satellite comes into commercial service in 2020, to meet the surging demand for high-capacity broadband across the skies and seas of Europe and the Middle East.
