Florida, march 13, 2018.

The award is for an innovative solution which uses MSS (Mobile Satellite Service) to provide dependable communications to a railway system in Brazil.

The Top Land Mobility Satcom Innovation Award is given by the MSUA (Mobile Satellite Users Association) to organizations deemed to have delivered the top innovations introduced to the satellite land mobile market during the past year, and the 2017 award goes to the leading multi country MSS (Mobile Satellite Service) consortium Globalsat Group, based in the US and with offices throughout the western hemisphere, for its work in railroad satellite communications through the group’s Brazil affiliate.

Throughout the last two years, Globalsat do Brasil deployed an innovative satellite L-band solution for railroad communications and telemetry. Valec needed a highly dependable and easy to use system that would increase safety and streamline operations. During the testing process, Globalsat Group carried out an outstanding practical demonstration of comms-on the move on the railway, reaching higher that 99% availability, something which no other supplier was able demonstrate.

By leveraging coverage and redundant terrestrial infrastructure, Globalsat has been able to provide seamless and uninterrupted service, used by Valec in several ways:

• The drivers are equipped with Cobham Explorer Push-To-Talk (PTT) terminals, which allow them to communicate with the operations center at any time, regardless of where they are located and not affected by any atmospheric or space weather conditions which could hinder other means of communications.
• The operation center can track the location of the vehicles in real time, with the same level of reliability as the PTT service. Other types of non-voice bidirectional communications can eventually be added, as the service continuously allows access to almost half a megabyte per second of bandwidth.

Both PTT voice and location data functions are enabled by a combination of Cobham Explorer PTT and BGAN terminals, integrated into the vehicles by Globalsat and connected to the highly reliable Inmarsat L-band network.
As a result, Valec can now implement a sophisticated traffic control system, based on the known real-time position of maintenance vehicles and transport trains. This allows the organization to react to events more quickly and accurately, achieving a higher measure of safety and better return on investment by making more efficient use of the railroad infrastructure and vehicles.

J. Alberto Palacios, Globalsat CEO, comments: “We are seeing a continuous increase in demand for services that go beyond simple voice or messaging and M2M, where extra bandwidth, high availability and real-time bidirectional access enable tangible safety and operational benefits. Our team is very proud of the work we have done with Valec, Inmarsat and Cobham through this project and we expect to bring solutions of this kind to other organizations across our footprint, regardless of their size, sector or geographical location”.

Globalsat worldwide business partner and satellite operator Inmarsat has also highlighted the Valec BGAN project, labeling it as one of its prominent success case stories during 2017. The Globalsat consortium has also received a previous distinction for a similar project also in Brazil with the power distribution company Elektro.