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The revolutionary new handheld satellite voice phone by Inmarsat, has won a maritime innovation award – just eight months after its launch.

Sail Magazine, an American print and online publication for the sailboat world and long recognized as the premier sailing publication has awarded Inmarsat’s global handheld satellite voice phone its annual Pittman Electronics Innovation Award. The IsatPhone Pro satellite phone was selected for its affordability, design, general appeal and overall utility for both sailing cruisers and racers.

Sail electronics editor Ralph Naranjo had this to say about the IsatPhone Pro. It is compact, easy to use and less expensive than other handheld satellite voice phones. As a transoceanic communicator, the unit represents one of the most cost-effective satellite communications alternatives on the market today. With its competitive pricing and dollar-per-minute usage fees, the IsatPhone Pro satellite phone is well worth a close look.”

Launched last summer, the IsatPhone Pro Satellite phone is the most robust handheld satellite phone on the market today. The phone offers:

• Longest battery life
• Reliable global coverage
• Clear voice quality
• Text messaging
• email
• Ease of use.

“We are honored to have received Sail’s Pittman Innovation Award for IsatPhone Pro,” said Frank August, Inmarsat’s business development director for the Americas. We always believed the IsatPhone Pro would have tremendous appeal for the sailing community and we are very pleased with the enthusiasm and response from the market so far.”

Sail Magazine’s annual awards are named after its late editor Freeman K. Pittman.

Inmarsat’s FleetBroadband 150 (FBB150) was the winner of the electronics innovation category in the 2010 Pittman awards.

Eighteen Mexicans had been enjoying a diving holiday on a deserted coral island in the Indonesian archipelago when their chartered boat, the Sea Safari III, hit a reef in the middle of the night and began taking on water. The divers decided to abandon ship, take to their lifeboats and head for the nearby island of Mainyaifun, one of nearly 10,000 islands in the region.

Prior to abandoning ship the divers had attempted to report their location (GPS coordinates) to their homeport of Sorong, only to discover that their VHF radio was out of range. No one could hear their distress call.

There was no reason for anyone to begin looking for them as they weren’t expected back for another 5 days. They faced an uncertain future with just emergency supplies salvaged from the Sea Safari III. The situation looked grim. They had no other means of communication, or so they thought at the time.

Fortunately, one of the divers had recently purchased the new iSatphone pro satellite phone manufactured by Inmarsat just days before leaving on the dive vacation. When the order to abandon ship came he insisted on returning to his cabin to get the satellite voice phone and some other valuables. He had bought the phone in order to stay in touch with work, not thinking for a minute that it would be instrumental for an emergency rescue.

The satellite voice phone enabled the divers to contact the mainland and report their position. They later enjoyed the good fortune of another diving party that just happened upon the same island as they were awaiting rescue.

Safely back home, the IsatPhone Pro owner had this to say: “All the divers on that boat learned a valuable lesson from this voyage – a satellite phone could very well be the tool that saves your life in one of these situations. When you’re in an unknown, uninhabited location with no way to contact the outside world, it can mean the difference between life and death.”

Always in search of the “perfect wave”, surfer and photographer, Joel Coleman, routinely travels to the most remote corners of the earth. Of course, finding that wave is only the first step. Ultimately , recording and transmitting it for viewing by his audiences, proved to be a whole other challenge. The Australian runs a website called Saltmotion. He also exhibits his dramatic surfer images in a gallery in Sydney.

Each afternoon Joel posts that day’s photographic images of ocean scenes and people surfing to Saltmotion.com website and to a growing list of more than 10,000 email subscribers. Each photo is accompanied by a brief description of all relevant information, which might include conditions, geographic location, time of day and anything else that might be of interest to his viewers.

“Like many other surfers I have been travelling the globe in search of perfect waves,” Joel explained. In late 2010, I was invited by a group of documentary film makers to join them in their search for ideal surfing conditions in India. Given the isolated regions they were aiming to visit, the only way I could make daily updates to the Saltmotion website and my email subscribers was to find a mobile data solution that would allow me to send from anywhere in the world.”

Inmarsat’s Portable BGAN Service proved the answer that Saltmotion was looking for. He was so impressed by the BGAN Explorer 500 that he used for that trip that he returned to hire the same terminal again earlier this year. Inmarsat took an interest in his project and approached him regarding some co-marketing and sponsorship opportunities for 2011.

“Although internet access is beginning to reach some of the places I go, it is more often than not completely unreliable,” Joel said. “In fact in many areas when we travel to remote beaches internet access is non-existent. The Portable BGAN solution works perfectly for me every time. Its speed, mobility and reliability are very well suited to my needs. I gather the day’s photographs, write some text, then create a zip file and up-load it to our server. Our gallery staff can then create the daily updates and the email.”

Now portable BGAN is helping Joel share his spectacular images with potential tourists. He is partnering with a travel company – The perfect Wave – to bring the thrills of remote surfing to people on holiday.

For the last two years, Spain’s Albacora Group has been testing the marine satellite services system, the Fleetbroadband, on one of it’s tuna boats. Due to the success of these tests, the company has now spread this satellite technology across their entire fleet of vessels as they have come to realize how vital a role dependable communications plays at sea.

The captain and crew can now stay in touch with their families through email, facebook and skype via the marine satellite services system. Having a dependable satellite link makes all the difference in the world…it’s like having a floating office on the water. Albacora had been using the Fleet 77 and upgraded to an Inmarsat Fleetbroadband 250 terminal with potential broadband satellite data speeds up to 284Kbps. By the end of the year, Albacora will have 2 marine satellite services terminals on board each of it’s tuna boats, supply ships and refrigerated vessels.

The three main types of data communications via the marine satellite services terminal are oceanographic data, emails and the information specific to fishing. Albacora’s electronics department manager Ruben Mugira explains that Albacora’s boats fish in tropical waters for tuna and that fleetbroadband has broadened their scope of communications coverage.

As far as the administrative side of things, Ruben added that producing daily fishing reports (for the EU) has been seamless due to the presence of satellite internet onboard. The more information a captain has access to, the better the decsions being made. For instance, the vessels are able to view sea temperature, currents and winds for the best indication of where the fish are.

Inmarsat, the world’s leading provider of marine satellite services, recently announced the development of multi-satellite voice capability via the Fleet Broadband (FBB) terminals to delegates at Nor-Shipping in Oslo, Norway – one of the maritime industries biggest conference and exhibition events. Mariners will soon be able to access up to nine lines from a single FBB terminal enabling them to make up to nine simultaneous Voice calls from that one terminal

Planned for commercial roll-out in the last quarter of 2011, ths multi-voice capability will also be available on ALL new marine satellite services terminals as well.

“The power of the BGAN network that underpins FleetBroadband is that it has the flexibility and the capability to allow us to introduce new offerings such as this,” said James Collett, Inmarsat’s senior director of maritime business. “Ship owners and managers will be able to access up to nine telephone lines from a single terminal, allowing them to assign telephone lines for specific requirements, and to more easily separate the business and operational communications needs from those of the crew. Each line will have its own +870 telephone number. We believe this service will be particularly beneficial for crew communications,” Collett concludes.

At a suggested retail price of US$0.55 per minute, the cost of calls using this new service will highly competitive in the marketplace. The SRP applies to existing and new activations, and for both pre-paid and post-paid calls.

“We have announced this new SRP because we believe there remains an opportunity to grow both operational and crew voice traffic,” Collett goes on to say. “ We are seeing more use of email and data communications on the marine satellite services terminals, but there is evidence that shows people will call more when the price point is appropriate.”

With the help of a portable satellite internet device, archaeologists with the Valley of the Khans research team have been able to analyze crucial data virtually prior to organizing a ground excavation of the potential burial site of Genghis Khan. Members of the public were able to offer assistance with this expedition by helping researchers look through and spot GeoEye-1 satellite imagery of the area in and around Mongolia. The assistance of the public to act as virtual explorers, provided more eyes to sift through all the data using online tools available through the team website.

Every morning the archaeologists would download notes provided by the public explorers – then utilize this info to organize the search on the ground with the use of BGAN satellite and aerial imagery and geomagnetic testing such as ground penetrating radar and electro magnetometers. All this data was made possible for the researchers to access via the portableterminal.

Dr Albert Yu-Min Lin from the University of California, San Diego directed the expedition. “The expansion of our expedition would have been impossible without BGAN. The unit provided us with reliable voice and data connectivity in one of the world’s most remote regions. This helped us maintain the highest levels of safety and productivity while in the field.” The portable BGAN terminal was also used for blogging and sending photos as well as accessing medical analysis from the remote location.

With over 1 million visitors each year, Joshua Tree Nation Park is a popular sight for hikers, campers, bikers and backpackers. Containing portions of the Sonoran and Mojave Deserts, the park spans across 800,000 acres.

Like many national parks, visitors to Joshua Tree frequently spend their time camping, climbing boulders and exploring trails – which consequently can lead to accidents and injuries throughout the park. Although park rangers patrol the park 24/7, with elevations in the park ranging from a low of 536 feet to a high of 5,814 feet, the mountainous terrain and remote location of the park allow for very limited cell phone reception, if any at all. In addition, given the size of the park, it is impossible for the rangers to be accessible to all areas at once. Joshua Tree park rangers needed a way to quickly respond to emergencies and communicate with visitors and other public safety personnel in a timely manner.

KR Nida Communications, a commercial radio dealer of interoperable products for public safety customers, realized the critical need for providing park goers with quick and easy access to the park rangers and emergency services.

Using the G2 mobile satellite radio transceiver unit, a solar panel and a battery, KR Nida modified a standard emergency call box phone so that visitors can make calls to emergency responders if they are in trouble. Callers simply lift the receiver and the phone auto dials the sheriff’s office, which in turn dispatches the information to the park rangers. The use of mobile satellite communications service ensures park visitors have a reliable comms method to contact public safety personnel.

“In an emergency situation, it’s critical to know that the call box will work and someone will be on the other end,” said Alberto Casanova, Operations Manager for KR Nida. “We chose to use the G2 Mobile Satellite Radio, because it is 100 percent reliable and provides us an added degree of certainty.”

Currently the park has one satellite-enabled emergency call box located in a heavy traffic area, with plans to install a second later in 2010. Because of KR Nida’s creative use of satellite technology, Joshua Tree’s park rangers now have a reliable and simple means of communicating with each other during an emergency and visitors have an added level of assurance that they can communicate with someone in the event of an emergency.

Inmarsat rolls out the latest Version 5 of the BGAN Launchpad Software. Versatile in that it can be used across all Land Portable, Land Mobile and FleetBroadband terminals, V5 boasts the following features:

A single combined application supports BGAN Land Portable, Land Mobile and FleetBroadband terminals.
Supports English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, French and Russian languages.
User can define (name) GPS Locations.
Language support for Fleet Broadband terminals. In addition to the above features, LaunchPad Version 5 enables the user to download and install, separate to the Launchpad itself, exclusive to Inmarsat TCP Accelerator software which significantly impacts and enhances the performance of TCP traffic in the outgoing direction.

We highly recommend users install LaunchPad Version 5 at their earliest opportunity. Click here to access new BGAN Launchpad Software

James Collett, the director of maritime business at Inmarsat says that whole new generations of modern mariners who grew up with the internet are now being recruited by vessel managers. It’s extremely vital that services like Fleetbroadband, cater to these tech savvy employee’s as they have come to expect a certain level of technology for communicating. Inmarsat is developing new pricing that will offer a wide array of options for providing web access for captain and crew as well as cost effective voice services so that those onboard will be able to communicate with loved ones and friends back on the mainland.

Inmarsat’s IsatPhone Pro hand held satellite telephone has been awarded the Pittman Innovation Award in the Electronics category. The Pittman Awards, sponsored by Sail magazine, recognize the most innovative products in the sailboat market. The IsatPhone Pro was selected as a 2011 winner for its affordability, design and general appeal and utility for both cruisers and racers.

“IsatPhone Pro is compact, easy to use and less expensive than other handheld satellite phones,” said Sail electronics Editor Ralph Naranjo. “As a transoceanic communicator, the unit represents one of the most cost-effective satellite communications alternatives on the market today. With its competitive pricing and dollar-per-minute usage fees, lsatPhone Pro is well worth a close look.”

Launched in the summer of 2010, IsatPhone Pro offers high-quality satellite telephony, text and email messaging. It is the most robust handheld satellite phone on the market today, offering the longest battery life, reliable global coverage, clear voice quality and ease of use – all at the most competitive price point in the market.

“We are honored to have received Sail’s Pittman Innovation Award for the IsatPhone Pro,” said Frank August, Inmarsat Maritime Director. “We always believed IsatPhone Pro would have tremendous appeal for the sailing community and we are very pleased with the enthusiasm and response from the market so far.”

Every competing yacht in the 2011 Volvo Ocean Race will carry an IsatPhone Pro.