Inmarsat Awards GBP 6M Deal to Logica

Logica, the global solutions company, announced it has secured a GBP 6m contract to help develop future higher bandwidth satellite communications for global mobile satellite communications provider, Inmarsat Limited. This contract forms part of an over GBP 30 million programme with Thrane & Thrane, a leader in the market for satellite communications equipment, to build the satellite interface and other equipment that will allow Inmarsat's Broadband Global Area Network (B-GAN) services due for launch during 2004 to be transmitted to and from terrestrial networks. Currently Inmarsat operates its Global Area Network (GAN) service which supports data speeds of up to 64 kbit/s, almost seven times faster than speeds offered by current GSM networks. Its B-GAN services are planned to provide higher bandwidth services at data speeds of up to 432 kbit/s based on mobile packet data technology. These are expected to be delivered via two new satellites on a virtual global basis to 80% of the land mass in which users of Inmarsat's existing services operate. Logica and Thrane & Thrane have been contracted to jointly develop, produce and install a Radio Access Network (RAN), which supports satellite communications connectivity between Inmarsat users and the terrestrial network. Logica will supply Thrane & Thrane with a satellite interface which will be a key element of Inmarsat's B-GAN solution. This critical component supports the transfer of multimedia traffic streams between the satellites and the core network. Inmarsat's B-GAN services are intended to allow businesses to operate where conventional terrestrial telecom infrastructures do not exist or cannot always be relied on to support the necessary data rich applications such as two-way email, web surfing, image transfer, local area network (LAN) and wide area network (WAN) access.