Orbcomm announced that service for its first six next-generation OG2 satellites is now operational, providing customers with machine-to-machine solutions, including messaging, and automatic identification system (AIS) service.
After in-orbit testing, the satellites have been properly spaced within their orbital planes and are now processing over 20% of the network’s M2M traffic, the company said. With the addition of the OG2 satellites, Orbcomm is now collecting over 13 million AIS messages from more than 130,000 unique vessels per day, surpassing all other AIS networks in service quality.
“Through great teamwork among Sierra Nevada Corporation, Boeing and ORBCOMM’s engineering and network operations teams, we have been able to quickly validate the performance of the six OG2 satellites,” said John Stolte, executive vice president of technology & operations. “Customers are experiencing significantly improved service, particularly during parts of the day when we previously had limited satellite coverage. The versatility of the OG2 satellites will also enable us to further improve communication capabilities to ensure we are providing our customers with the highest levels of reliability, coverage, service and performance.”
The OG2 satellites are fully backwards compatible with ORBCOMM’s existing OG1 network. Customers do not need to change or upgrade their devices to use them.
