Iridium Acquires Satelles to Expand Reach in PNT Market

Ibadan, 5 March 2024. – Iridium Communications Inc. has entered into an agreement to acquire Satelles, Inc., a provider of satellite-based time and location services (STL) that complement and protect GPS and other GNSS-reliant systems. This acquisition continues Iridium’s philosophy of investing in differentiating technologies uniquely suited to its network. STL will consequently become a new business line of Iridium, led by Satelles CEO Dr. Michael O’Connor, who will report to Iridium CEO Matt Desch.

Satelle’s Satellite Time and Location (STL) service is a solution that increases the efficiency and reliability of timing systems for digital infrastructure like 5G base stations, data centers, and other critical infrastructure and protects against GNSS vulnerabilities using low-cost hardware that doesn’t require outdoor antennas. The STL service utilizes the stronger broadcast paging channels of the Iridium® satellite constellation to deliver precise timing information, which provides global, secure time and location signals that are 1,000 times more powerful than GNSS constellations.

Iridium will now work to reduce the size and cost barriers to adoption, enabling the deployment of a more accessible solution for integration with autonomous systems, consumer devices, vehicles and traditional markets like aviation, maritime and land mobile. It also provides an opportunity for Iridium’s existing partner ecosystem to add to its portfolio of solutions and harden its GNSS-reliant products and infrastructure.

Speaking on the acquisition, Iridium CEO Matt Desch said, “Acquiring Satelles makes perfect sense for Iridium and is consistent with what our strategy has always been, which is to take advantage of our unique network to do what others can’t or do it better than anyone else can. STL is the superior solution available today, and we have been following and investing in Satelles’s technology roadmap to allow us to create even more opportunity.”